The Witch and the Priestess
by Claywind
Summary: When Sirius Black died, few expected Hermione to follow him behind the Gate. Even fewer expected a somewhat dishevelled, cursing, time-travelling Shinto priestess to come out in her place. And certainly no one expected Sirius to embark on a post-mortem road trip with the spirit of a demonic sword.
1. The Gate

**Summary:** When Sirius Black died, few expected Hermione to follow him behind the Gate. Even fewer expected a somewhat dishevelled, cursing, time-travelling Shinto priestess to come out in her place. And certainly _no one_ expected Sirius to embark on a post-mortem road trip with the spirit of a demonic sword.

 **Title:** The Witch and the Priestess

 **Genre:** Adventure/Romance

 **Disclaimer:** I am neither J. K. Rowling, nor Rumiko Takahashi and I do NOT own the Harry Potter universe or the Inuyasha universe. No matter how much I want to.

 **Rating:** M, for adult themes, mild swearing, violence and lemon

 **Warnings:** This is probably going to turn into a crack fic.

XXXXXXXXX

"Now listen to me."

Sirius' voice was tense and Harry looked up at him, trying to hide the fear in his eyes. The fight around them was a confusion of shouts and noises. Green lights were flying, red, white, yellow, blue… hexes reverberating on the walls, only punctuated by muffled groans or high pitched shrills when someone was hit.

Amidst the chaos, Harry briefly wondered how he was able to focus on what his godfather was saying.

"I want you to take the others and get out of here," Sirius continued.

Harry stared.

"What?" he asked in disbelief.

He could not just turn his back while the only decent relative he had was risking his life.

"No, I'm staying with you…" he pressed but Sirius put a hand on his shoulder.

"You've done beautifully," he said and Harry knew, from the pride in his Godfather's voice, that Sirius thought every word he was saying. "Now let me take it from here."

XXXXX

"Kagome, please…"

Shippo's voice was pleading, his big emerald eyes filled with near-shedding tears.

Kagome sighed in indecision and looked at Sango for advice but the demon slayer was resolutely staying out of the small kit's _cuteness area_ , as they had ended up calling it. Shippo hugged her leg tighter, his lower lip trembling.

Propped against a tree, Inuyasha mimicked a good knocking on some imaginary head and Kagome considered the idea for a moment.

Her eyes fell back on little Shippo, who had now managed to shed the tears he had been building and was looking even more pitiable than a moment ago.

Kagome sighed again. Deeply.

"Fine, you little devil. I'll bring the damn candies _and_ I'll sew the freaking plushie back to one piece."

Shippo's eyes lit with glee and he hugged her with all of his little strength.

XXXXX

They were side by side, fighting Lucius and Amycus. Right in the center of the room, not even two feet away from the strange archway, godfather and godson were casting together like they were one entity, two wands for a single mind, and Harry felt a rush of exhilaration.

 _This_ was how it was meant to be.

" _Expelliarmus_!" he shouted, pointing at Lucius' left hand.

His spell reached the wizard's second wand and sent it flying backwards.

"Nice one, James!" Sirius exclaimed, a bit lost in the heat of the battle, before pointing his wand again and casting silently another _expelliarmus_. Lucius was disarmed. Another wand gesture and he was propelled against a wall.

Harry smiled to Sirius. His godfather briefly smiled back and-…

"Avada kedavra!"

The green beam seemed very slow. Harry looked at it, his mind wondering confusedly why his body wasn't moving to do something. Anything.

Sirius staggered. He looked at Harry, the light in his eyes already beginning to dull.

He stumbled once more and fell backwards, almost sucked up by the misty waves. They carried him through the stone archway and his body disappeared.

As if it had never existed.

XXXXX

Kagome was walking towards the bone-eater well. The day was warm and, for once, Inuyasha wasn't being a jerk. He had actually managed the feat of walking all the way up from the village without irritating her one bit.

When knowing how the hanyou could easily get on her nerves, that was extremely impressive.

They arrived at the clearing and Kagome turned to him to say goodbye.

"Oi, wench."

She rolled her eyes at the appellation and bit back with her new answer to the hanyou's rudeness:

"What, dog-friend?"

Inuyasha growled at the nickname – he was half dog-demon, wasn't he? – but his eyes were smiling.

"Be careful, okay?"

She stopped for a bit, looking puzzled:

"What exactly could happen to me in the modern era?" she asked, "The worst beast I might encounter is Buyo, and he's only a danger to dry food…"

"Just… just be careful," he gruffly answered before sending her a pleading look. "Please?"

She crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow.

"You know, Shippo is a lot better than you at the puppy-dog-eyes thing, which is kind of strange considering you're the dog. You should consider asking him for lessons."

The hanyou's gaze proudly drifted away in an attempt to maintain a certain dignity and his suddenly regal attitude couldn't help but to remind her of Sesshomaru. As much as the two brothers refused to admit it, there were a lot of similarities in their behaviours.

Knowing her answer wasn't the one Inuyasha had wanted to hear, she closed the distance between them and hugged him.

Of course, he protested loudly, but that didn't stop her. Also, she had come to realize that even if he was roaring complain after complain, he was not struggling that hard to get out of her arms.

"I'll be very careful," she declared without letting go. "Watch over the others for me, okay?"

His attempts at escaping stopped and he grumbled an agreement. Not knowing what to do with his hands, he put them on her shoulders.

She eventually let go of him, walked back to the well, and sat on the ridge.

"I should be back in three days or so. Come and see me if something goes wrong."

He nodded, solemn.

"Fare well, Kagome," he muttered under his breath though she could still distinctly hear his words.

She smiled back brightly and pushed her knees over the ridge. He was becoming more polite, there was no doubt about it.

Then she jumped, and the instant she did so, she knew something was wrong.

XXXXX

Sirius was floating in a white place.

The last thing he remembered was Harry's face and a green flash. He was dead, then?

He tried to look around him but there was only whiteness. He closed his eyes, but the white did not fade to black. He tried to move but when he put his hands in front of him, he realized he did not have a body. Or perhaps it had become invisible?

Considering the situation, he was almost certain that he should have been afraid but there was only peace within him.

He wondered if that was it. Death. This peaceful, boring state. If so, it was not so bad. He only regretted not being allowed to live longer. He would have wanted to stay and help Harry.

Oh gosh, Harry should be very sad right now.

Emotions flew into him and the perfect whiteness shattered.

Sirius looked at his hands. They were there. He had a body. Relief overwhelmed him and disappeared just as abruptly, replaced by the peace. Strange, he commented to himself before looking around and being quite surprised to find himself in a train station.

A very, very, very white train station that reminded him of King's Cross.

He went to sit on a bench and contemplated his options. He could try to get out, there seemed to be doors, but a voice within his mind was telling him that the outside would only be a repetition of the peaceful boring whiteness. He could also explore one of the four tunnels. They seemed much more as if they were leading somewhere than the door of the train station. However, the tunnels were narrow and he was mildly enthusiast with the idea of being overrun by some death train of doom or whatever.

After a while, he heard a noise coming from one of the rails and a train emerged from the white tunnel. It looked a lot like the Hogwarts Express, but with dark green in place of the red that Sirius remembered from his own school years. The bright colors contrasted greatly with the pure whiteness of the rest of the hall. In fact, he realized, they were annoying him.

The train stopped and the door that was the closest to his bench opened.

Sirius hesitated briefly before deciding that he had nothing better to do. He got up, walked to the train, put his foot on the first step-…

A very loud crash came from the platform behind him and he jumped around, his hand instinctively searching for his wand, which he obviously did not have with him.

The bench where he had sat had disappeared. The ground under it had shattered. Or… had been _cut_ , as the four deep gouges forming a kind of square on the white paving stones seemed to suggest. Scared, but very curious, Sirius walked to the square hole.

There was a girl inside.


	2. The Exchange

**Disclaimer:** I am neither J. K. Rowling, nor Rumiko Takahashi and I do NOT own the Harry Potter universe or the Inuyasha universe. No matter how much I want to.

 **Rating:** M, for adult themes, mild swearing, violence and lemon

 **Warnings:** This is probably going to turn into a crack fic.

XXXXXXXXX

Sirius was contemplating the teenage girl he had found. She was floating, apparently unconscious, in the middle of the square hole. He kneeled to the edge and looked more closely. She was around Harry's age – fifteen, maybe more – and clearly of Asian ancestry. Long black hair, short green skirt and a weird sailor blouse. The ensemble made him think of a school uniform, which Sirius doubted greatly it was. What kind of person would design such a revealing piece of cloth with the express idea to have it be worn by teenage girls?

Once the clothing issues were no more the most important thing on his mind, Sirius tried to wake the girl. He attempted diverse methods but, since she was out of his reach and he had nothing to throw at her, his possibilities were limited. He eventually resolved to call her to get her attention.

Of course, he had no idea if she could even hear him.

"Hey! Girl! Can you hear me?"

"I can," sprung a voice behind him. "And I am not deaf."

Sirius jumped to his feet, startled, and his jaw went slack as he found himself facing the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

Waves of incredibly long silver-white hair rippled from a high pony tail, floating around her as if she was underwater. Her strange garments, a long dress that looked like a kimono with very long sleeves of pristine white shade, except for the bright scarlet cherry blossom patterns adorning the left shoulder. The pale glowing skin of her face was contrasted with strange indigo markings in the form of two fine stripes on each of her cheeks and a crescent moon on her forehead. Her eyes were the purest gold, rimmed with long white lashes and Sirius lost himself in this gaze.

"I… Miss… Madam..." he finally struggled, at a complete loss of words.

"Lady," offered the woman with a delighted smile.

"Oh, of course" he stammered before regaining a bit of calm "Milady, I mean no disrespect but could you tell me who you are? And if you could also enlighten me on what is going on with that poor girl and- wait, hold that, _where are we_?"

The lady had raised an amused eyebrow at the stream of question.

"Surely you must have guessed by now," she replied softly, "but you are beyond."

"Beyond?"

"Beyond the mortal realm. You are dead."

"Yes," said Sirius. "Yes I can know that. But what is this place? Why am I… why _are we_ alone? I'm certainly not the only person to have died in the last minutes. And… is death a train station? Why is _death_ a _train station_?!"

The lady smiled at his frantic tone, but her eyes remained serious.

"I will not answer you for two reasons. One: I have been to intermediary places before, but never to this one in particular. Two: you would not be allowed a second life if I were to tell you the truth of beyond."

She frowned a bit.

"And I have already revealed too much."

"And what about this girl?" asked Sirius. "What is she doing here, if that is not a secret of some sort?"

The lady turned her golden gaze to the floating form in the square pit.

"This priestess comes from my home world. It would seem that she is required elsewhere. Perhaps to yours," she mused briefly for herself before turning back to the girl: "If that is the case, the powers that be should have accorded themselves on an exchange…"

She frowned a bit more:

"But then, why would I have been called here? It is not my place to watch over the departed. Was there a mistake?" She turned towards the ceiling: "Inu no Taisho, who is this man and why was I awoken by his death?"

Sirius followed her move and looked at the ceiling, half expecting some strange person to float down from it, but nothing happened. He turned back to the white lady.

"I'm not sure if that helps," he declared, "but my name is Sirius Black."

"It does not really help," she replied with an apologetic smile, "but it is still something."

There was a short silence.

"And where are my manners?" she suddenly exclaimed. "My apologies, I should introduce myself. I am known as the Fang of Heaven. My name is Tenseiga."

She bowed her head very gracefully and Sirius replied in kind. He then turned to the white train station.

"Well, Lady Tenseiga. What happens now?"

She pointed at the green and gold train that was still waiting, his only door opened to a warm colorful interior. Sirius felt an urge to go and sit on the leather seats he could see from the windows.

"The train seems to be the path to your afterlife," she mentioned and then pointed at the hole with the girl floating inside, "but the well was opened when you were attempting to board. I suppose the powers that be need you to go down the well to complete the exchange and allow them to wake the priestess."

"You mean she would wake up here?"

"Unlikely. I suppose she would wake where you left your world."

"The Gate?"

"If that is what you call it, then yes."

"You think she'll be fine?"

"She will wake up, cross the Gate and arrive, fully alive, to your world."

"Well then," he said walking towards the hole, "I can't just let her here. Plus, I guess I'll wake up in her world too, right?"

If this was a second chance at life, he was not going to say no. As tempting as the green and gold train was, it was not comparable to the possibility of living again.

"Your body would appear down the well," stated Lady Tenseiga. "Of that I am certain. But in your current condition… it could very well be a corpse."

His head snapped back to her.

"What? Why?"

"You died before crossing the Gate. The priestess was alive when she crossed."

Sirius looked at the square hole in the ground. Then he looked at the green and gold train. He sat down and took his head in his hands.

"So… either I go to my afterlife and let this poor girl stuck here for eternity _or_ I go down that hole and die a second time… well, then I guess I'll go to the afterlife, anyway, so…"

"No," she cut him off. "I am unsure of what would befall your soul, but I am quite convinced you would not come back to this …train station as you call it.

"Then what would happen to me?"

"I believe your soul would be destroyed."

"Oh… Shit."

She nodded.

"Indeed."

There was a long silence during which Sirius looked at the unconscious girl. He did not know anything about her, apart that Lady Tenseiga had called her a priestess, which probably meant it was a nice girl. She was very young. Approximately Harry's age. If she had crossed while alive, then she certainly had a family who'd be waiting for her. Friends, parents, siblings… If she never came back, it would be just as if she were dead to them. They would miss her the same way. Could he, in good conscience, go to his afterlife and let everyone that she knew believe she had died?

"Perhaps there is another possibility," Lady Tenseiga suddenly stated.

Sirius sharply turned his head towards her.

"We could force another exchange."

"How?"

The white lady brought a hand to her side and unsheathed a sword. Sirius blinked. He could have sworn she did not have the blue sheath tucked in her belt a second ago, but there it was.

She raised an arm and the blade began to glow a faint blue. Then, slowly, carefully she brought the sword down; as if she was cutting something that he could not see. Her measured slash created a bright slit through the air.

"If we remove you from the exchange, they will be forced to bring in someone who is not dead yet. And I know someone who might be convinced to resurrect you."

She sheathed the sword and offered him her hand.

Not really having a better option, he took the hand and followed her through the slit.


	3. Priestess' Awakening

**Disclaimer:** I am neither J. K. Rowling, nor Rumiko Takahashi and I do NOT own the Harry Potter universe or the Inuyasha universe. No matter how much I want to.

 **Rating:** M, for adult themes, mild swearing, violence and lemon

 **Warnings:** This is probably going to turn into a crack fic.

XXXXXXXXX

Kagome opened her eyes to a dim penumbra. Sounds were coming muffled to her ears. She had the impression she had been sleeping for quite some time.

Where was she?

She fought back the surge of panic and evened her breathing. Whatever or whoever was – or was not – with her should not know if she had waken. Their ignorance could give her a chance if she had to fight. The reflection was not conscious. It had been engraved in her mind, a habit born of too many bloodied mornings. Youkai apparently liked to attack on the mornings a lot. Two years of chasing demons in the feudal era had taught her to stay silent when waking up in a strange state of mind or in a place she didn't know.

Thus, Kagome stayed very silent and called out her miko powers to inspect her surroundings. The mystical senses, sharpened by weeks of constant use, informed her that she was alone – which was reassuring – and, most importantly, that she was nowhere.

In a very specific kind of nowhere, mind you. One that just happened to share an opening with another spatio-temporal reality. She relaxed a bit.

Just like her good old bone-eater well.

She carefully got up and assessed her bag, bow and quiver. The big yellow bag was still closed tightly so she could assume nothing of what was in it had been lost. Her bow was in good condition, which was surprising, since she had awoken lying on it. She would have expected the string to have broken or the wood to be bent, but no. As for her quiver…

Well, the quiver was fine, really. It was just empty.

"Oh shit," she muttered to herself while probing the ground for fallen arrows. "It's gonna be one of these days, isn't it?"

She hurt her knee on something pointy and sharp. Biting back a shrill cry, she bought it to her eyes and recognized the tip of an arrow… the shaft, however, was missing.

"Yeah," she confirmed darkly, "this day's gonna suck."

All in all, she managed to find two arrows still intact, which she put in her quiver, and then turned to the mist-veiled opening that her miko senses indicated as another form of her usual time-travelling well.

Now ready – or what was the closest to ready in her situation – she walked with decided steps to what looked suspiciously like a Stonehenge archway. Was she going to end up in Ireland? Was Stonehenge even in Ireland? Now that it could matter, she couldn't remember the geography trivia she had been learning in her classes. Her attention refocused on the archway. Could have someone stolen two pillars from one of the most touristic sites in the world? Surely there were guardians…

 _Wait a minute…_ _when_ _am I?_

She froze at the realization that she was utterly lost, and in more ways than one. Could she try to go back to the feudal era? She looked up, searching the darkness for a familiar squared spot of blue sky but saw nothing.

On a brighter note, maybe the pillars weren't related to Stonehenge at all. It was just coincidence or an effect of her stubborn mind because she had been asked to make a presentation about the circle of stones two months ago and the thing was coming back to her now.

Yeah, that would make a lot more sense.

These considerations taken into account, Kagome Higurashi, Priestess of the Shikon no Tama, drew her bow, prepared an arrow and crossed the veils of mist.

There were people outside.

They had been looking expectantly at the suspiciously Stonehenge-looking Gate. Now, they were looking at her and she could tell that she was not expected.

She quickly assessed the situation. The Gate was right behind her and she did not want to go back. The strangely clothed people were forming a half-circle around her. She was surrounded. Damn. She detested being surrounded. It would mean she was a prey; it would mean they were allowed to jump at her throat if she showed any weakness… She strangled the new wave of panic, repeating to herself that those were humans, not demons. She should not be gauging them with youkai social norms in mind.

A redheaded boy suddenly jolted to her and grabbed her right arm.

" _Ouer-iz-shi?_ " he screamed at her in a language that was not Japanese. The tone used was aggressive and Kagome's reaction was instant.

Her knee went up and crashed into the boy's inner thigh. He groaned and released her right arm. She took three swift steps to the side and drew her bowstring. The tip of the arrow glinted as she pointed it to his chest with an intent look.

"I do not know who you are," she stated with a proud coldness, "but you will not attack me."

" _Aow! Dzat-heurt,-yu-no!_ " he growled to her.

Kagome had dropped behind in her lessons quite a bit, but not to the extent that she wouldn't recognize modern English. She lowered her bow with relief. If she was in the present, she was most probably not going to be killed on the spot.

" _Ouer-iz-shi?_ " repeated the red headed boy from a distance. " _Ouat-did-yu-du-ouis-her-mai-oni?_ "

She interiorly sighed. Foreign languages had never been her strongest suit.

" _Goodu moru-nin-gu?_ " she tentatively tried with quite a heavy accent, " _where I am?_ "

The puzzled looks on their faces taught her that languages weren't indeed her strongest suit.

XXXXXXXXX

 **Quite a short chapter here. Don't worry, next Kagome installments will be longer.**

 **For anyone who wondered, Stonehenge is located in southern England (Wiltshire, to be precise) Kagome is quite off with her Geography trivia.**

 **Hope you enjoy the story so far, don't hesitate to review, it's always motivating to hear from you guys**

 **Sincerely,**

 **Claywind**


	4. Witch and Half-demon

**Disclaimer:** I am neither J. K. Rowling, nor Rumiko Takahashi and I do NOT own the Harry Potter universe or the Inuyasha universe. No matter how much I want to.

 **Rating:** M, for adult themes, mild swearing, violence and lemon

XXXXXXXXX

She saw it. She saw everything.

She saw Bellatrix Lestrange kill Sirius Black and lead Harry away from the room. Frozen in horror, she willed her feet to move to follow her friend. He could not face the evil witch alone, she was too wicked, too deceitful… it was certainly a trap. Already her brain was analyzing and giving her the innumerable ways this could go bad. But she did not move. She did not move, because the Gate was calling.

She saw the Aurors fight and repel most of the Death Eaters. Her mind felt a bit numb. She saw some of the dark wizards realize the fight was a lost cause and apparate away. She should have moved, she should have moved and gone after Harry. She should move _now_.

The Gate was calling.

Like in a dream state, her feet obeyed her command but did not carry her where she wished. Her slow steps brought her to the archway. The veils of mist were swirling slowly, inviting.

She held out her hand. Her finger brushed lightly the grey haze and her feet moved of their own accord. The sound of a voice came to her ears, but muffled, as if spoken through thick layers of cotton. It was calling her name from the chaotic room and she distantly recognized Ron's voice. But the calling of the mists were pulling a stronger thread to her will and she did not stop.

She crossed the Gate.

A dark flash emptied her mind for a terrifying second. It was followed by a bright light and a sense of fleeting disorientation. She blinked and took a few steps on what felt like paved stone under her feet. Then she looked around. She paused. And looked around some more.

Behind her was a very white, almost shining, brick wall. She was standing at the far end of a train platform that seemed extremely familiar. She smacked her head when she realized that it was King's Cross station.

She was in King's Cross, there was no doubt… but a horde of little demons must have popped by before her arrival and bathed the whole train station in white spirit. Also, there was no one to be seen. The silence was eerie.

She walked along the rail on her right, looking curiously at the tunnel in which it disappeared.

Where the hell was she?

She noticed a strange pink light emanating from the ground in the middle of the platform. She approached cautiously, wand in hand, although she did not feel threatened at all. Somehow, she knew that nothing would harm her in this place.

There was a hole in the ground. A perfectly square hole that looked like it had been cut here by some extremely sharp knife. Or a light saber. She kneeled and passed a finger along the edges. They were extremely smooth, which excluded even a magical cut. A spell, perhaps? Anyway, she reported her attention on the inside of the strange hole.

There was a girl floating inside of it. Black haired, her features were distinctly Far Eastern – Japanese? Chinese? – and she was wearing a quite interesting, if not revealing, sailor uniform, completed by a huge yellow backpack. There was a quiver of arrows and a bow strapped to the side of it. And the pink light was coming from the girl's skin.

 _Talk about weird,_ Hermione thought, the questions piling in her head.

Looking past the shining girl, she scanned the dark hole underneath but could not make anything of the darkness. It really looked like the hole was bottomless. That could be dangerous. Hermione had no idea how the floating girl was… well… floating, but if whatever powered the levitation stopped to do so, she could hurt herself very bad.

"Hey!" Hermione called to the girl. "Give me your hand, I'll get you out of this hole! Wake-…"

Then the witch stopped in her track and almost banged her head on the nearest bench. Sighing at her distractedness, she drew her wand and pointed it at the girl.

" _Wingardium Leviosa_."

Nothing happened. Hermione repeated the incantation but it did not produce any more results than the first one.

 _Okay, first hypothesis: magic doesn't work in weird white King's Cross._

She attempted a few other charms to test her theory and their inefficiency confirmed it. No magic. Back to her first plan, she put her wand back in her robes and kneeled carefully over the hole. Extending a hand, she tried to reach the girl to pull her out. She was almost touching her shoulder when she lost balance.

Part of her mind coldly stated that she should have seen it coming.

The rest screamed in terror as gravity pulled her over the edge and down the black hole.

The fall was not a long fall. In fact, it was very short. Hermione landed surprisingly softly and after a few confusing seconds spent determining where were the 'up' and the 'down' sides of the universe, she found herself sitting in cold, damp dirt. Smells of earth and humus hit her with violence and the distant noises of singing birds seemed to assault her ears. It took her a good two minutes of bewilderment, before she reasoned that the utter silence of white King's Cross had made the return to a more normal reality quite confusing.

Satisfied with the explanation, she got up. She was not sure what she was doing underground, but she decided to rapidly get out of – she looked up and saw a square of blue sky – of the hole she was in. There were vines dangling from the top of the hole, but even though they appeared solid enough to hold her weight, Hermione was not a very enthusiast climber. Being afraid of heights did not help.

A head popped in the square of blue sky, looking down.

" _Kagome?_ " someone asked.

Hermione did not know what a ʻkagomeʼ was, but she was not going to let this detail stop her.

"Hello?" she asked. "Can you help me? I think I'm a bit lost…"

There was a red and silver blur and suddenly she was facing a red-clad, silver haired, yellow eyed … person. The fact that the hole was narrow and that he had suddenly popped way inside her personal space easily startled her. She let out a small shriek and pushed him back, which did not move him in the slightest. She took a few steps back, trying to go away from him, but in the narrow space of the hole, she could not escape.

" _Kagome wa doko?_ " he growled and Hermione noticed he had fangs, some kind of wolfish ears and looked very angry.

Climbing suddenly did not seem that bad after all and she turned to reach the vines but the guy gripped her wrists and forced her to face him.

" _Ore no shitsumon ni kotaemasu,_ " he said more kindly, apparently realizing that she was freaked out. " _Kagome wa doko?_ "

"I don't understand what you're saying," she blurted out, her voice wavering dangerously. "I'm sorry, I don't know what you want!"

One of his furry ears cocked to the side of his head and he looked at her, obviously confused. A part of her mind focused on the ear and established a parallel with a book she had read about different breeds of dogs. So, this guy had husky… no, akita ears. She was still contemplating the reasons a guy would have dog ears – a hex? – when he let go of her wrists… and caught her waist in his arms.

 _What the hug?_ she mentally shrieked. _I mean, what the hell?_

Hermione what about to kick him or bite his shoulder – who the hell did he think he was? – when her stomach lurched, brutally informing her that they had left the ground. She shrieked and grabbed the only thing that was within reach, namely the guy's shoulders.

XXXXX

Inuyasha had no idea where Kagome was or if she was in danger. His night of weakness was coming and he had intended to spend it with her in the modern era but when he had jumped, the well had stayed silent.

After the outburst of panic that had lead him to jump in and out again without any result, he had eventually settled to wait for Kagome to return. Sitting propped against one of the trees at the edge of the clearing, he had waited, his eyes never leaving the wooden ridge of the bone-eater well.

So when he heard noise inside, he immediately rushed to the well and looked down, calling his friend, heart filled with hope.

Someone else's voice answered in a language he could not understand. Curious and worried about Kagome, he jumped down. The girl let out a shriek that made him wince and punched his torso, which did not even hurt. Then the smell of her fear hit his nostrils and he stopped her from her frantic attempts at climbing out of the well. Kagome had practice in it, and even she had to admit it was not easy and that they should install a ladder or something.

When he grabbed her wrists, she stopped moving and seemed to calm down, even though the acrid scent of her fear did not leave. Strange. He decided the inevitable ensuing conversation should happen under the sun – in case Kagome tried to jump back, they'd better not be in the well.

So, just like he was used to do with his friend, he let go of the girl's wrists, took hold of her waist and jumped out of the well. The scream was ear-piercing and he had to repress a growl. What did she think he was doing? If he had wanted to kill her, he'd have done so already.

They landed in the clearing and he immediately let go of her, but now the girl was clinging to his shoulders like her life depended on it.

"We're arrived, wench," he grumbled. "You're alright, now, let go of me."

She looked at him with a lost look on her face. He sighed and disentangled her fingers from his clothes.

"See? I don't want to hurt ya."

She answered with another string of syllables that made no sense to him. At least the scent of fear was beginning to disperse. He took a few steps back and sat down, hoping that his body language would show her that he meant no harm.

She looked at him for a while, a bit wary – but then, who wouldn't be? – and then she decided to sit in front of him. He smiled and pointed at his chest.

"My name is Inuyasha," he articulated very carefully then he pointed at her. "Who are you?"

She looked at him and suddenly smiled and pointed at her own chest.

" _Aï-am her-maï-oni,_ " she said and extended her hand to him.

Ayam? That was a strange name. Maybe a short for 'Ayame'? But 'Ayame' was a first name, not a surname, so why would she say it first? perhaps _Hermai-oni_ … was her first name, then ? Why add that suffix at the end of it? Was she an oni? But she smelled human. And why was she showing him her hand and looking at him like she expected something?

He sighed. This was going to be very complicated. Perhaps he should go get Miroku and Sango. Human interactions had never been his forte.

XXXXXXXXX

 **There it is! An extra long chapter just for you. Next should be about Sirius, I think.**

 **While I am certainly not a fluent Japanese speaker, I did check Inuyasha's statement to be at least grammatically correct, albeit in the lowest level of politeness. (having a friend who actually speaks Japanese does help)**

 **" _Kagome wa doko?_ " = Where is Kagome?**

 **" _Ore no shitsumon hi kotaemasu._ " = Answer my question.**

 **Please don't hesitate to comment on whatever crosses your mind**

 **Sincerely,**

 **Claywind**


	5. Lost Ghosts

**Disclaimer:** I am neither J. K. Rowling, nor Rumiko Takahashi and I do NOT own the Harry Potter universe or the Inuyasha universe. No matter how much I want to.

 **Rating:** M, for adult themes, mild swearing, violence and lemon

XXXXXXXXX

Sirius Black looked at the clearing in which they had appeared. There was a square wooden construction standing roughly in the middle of it. He turned back to look at where they came from but the white slit in the air was already closing and he could not see anything more than a faint white light.

Lady Tenseiga put her sword back in its blue sheath and it disappeared from her garments.

 _Ah, ha! It turns invisible!_

The small piece of information he had deduced pushed him to inquire further:

"You have a sword that cuts through realities? That's … not common, I guess."

He was currently trying to reassemble the last figments of logic he could. The world as he had known it had been shattered. Of course, being a wizard, he had been accustomed to strange sights but, here, he was reaching the limit of his suspension of disbelief.

And the fact that a beautiful spirit lady had apparently "awoken" to his death and somehow saved his soul from being destroyed by a square hole – which was really an inter-dimensional portal – cut open in a white-spirit-bathed train station that served as an intermediary between life and death… yeah, that fact did not help him rebuild a coherent image of his world.

"Not exactly," corrected the mentioned lady. "I do not _possess_ the sword that cuts through realities. I simply _am_ that sword."

 _Yes,_ he thought in bewilderment. _She_ _simply_ _is a sword. That is so much more logical._

Sirius was slowly beginning to realize that he was in hell and that his punishment was constant and utter madness thrown randomly at him.

"You do not appear to believe me," she declared, seemingly annoyed by the fact. "I am Tenseiga, the Sword of Heaven, forged from the fang of the Inu no Taisho."

"Yes," replied a frantically grinning Sirius. "Yes, of course."

He was going to lose the last bits of sanity he still had. He took a few steps and concentrated his attention on less crazy matters. Like the grass and the trees. Good normal grass and trees. He eventually reached a more or less quiet state. At least, he was alive again. Well, mostly.

He raised his hands to his face. He could see them which meant he had a body. But he could also see _through_ them which was already more worrying.

Then he suddenly noticed that the little finger of his left hand was encircled with a fine glimmering red string. And that string was floating from his hand to Tenseiga's own little finger, encircling it as well. A silly part of his brain mentioned that it was the most refined and girly handcuff he had ever seen.

Shoving the idea aside, he tried to untie the scarlet thread, but his hands did not seem to be able to grasp it. His fingers went right through the string without even affecting it.

"What is that?" he asked Tenseiga with an alarmed voice.

She dropped her eyes to his raised pinkie and arched her delicate eyebrows.

"Oh," she said in a conversational tone, "I had not thought of that… though I should have."

"Is that a problem? What is happening?"

"We are linked," she stated evenly. "It is not dangerous. It might even allow me to protect you."

Her tranquility to the phenomenon calmed Sirius. If she was not worried, then surely there must be no reason to be. She presented her left hand and continued:

"It must have attached itself when we crossed."

She paused a while, playing with the thread.

"It is so obvious, now that I think of it. I brought you home through my own personal portal, which makes me the one who allowed you entrance to this reality… it is evident then, that this reality would link you to me."

Sirius looked back at trees and the grass. That piece of information was just a bit too big to chew right now. So he focused on the trees and waited for the hurricane storming his mind to calm itself. Then, he turned back to her.

"Lady Tenseiga?"

"You may drop the honorific, Sirius. Though I descend from the noblest of bloods, I truly cannot be considered a lady."

"But … that's what you told me to call you." he objected.

"I proposed that title because you seemed in search of a proper way to address me. But there is in fact no title to fit me, since I am not someone but something."

He eyed her skeptically. Whatever her delusion was, that was a strong one. Seeing his incredulity, she repeated herself:

"I already told you, though you do not seem willing to believe me. I am a sword. Not a person."

He shook his head and stated back:

"You can speak. You can reason. You can feel. You are a person to me."

Tenseiga cocked her head to the side, as if puzzled. Then she smiled and Sirius realized that when her golden eyes reflected the sun, their color turned a warm shade of honey. He decided to change the subject or he was going to drool and that would not be very proper in presence of a nice and polite woman, lady or not.

"So… where are we?" he asked, embracing the glade with a hand.

"We are in my home world and _this_ …" she pointed to the square wooden ridge protruding from the ground, "…is the bone-eater well, the local equivalent to your Gate."

She began walking away and Sirius followed her tranquil but decided pace. They crossed a strange red-clad, white haired boy at the edge of the clearing, but his attention was focused on the well and he did not pay any attention to them. Sirius noticed that the boy had pointy furry ears protruding from the top of his head and wondered briefly at the hex or curse that could be the reason for it.

"Who is that?" he asked in a whisper.

"The hanyou wielder of my sister," she answered as if it explained everything. "We should go quietly. My sister is asleep and I do not wish for her to notice us. She might attack you."

Sirius accelerated slightly at the sentence.

"And that boy?" he wondered "Can he not see us?"

"No. We are in spirit form."

"In spirit form?"

"Intangible. Invisible. Inaudible. We are ethereal. Their senses cannot perceive us."

"So… basically, we're ghosts."

Tenseiga gravely nodded and kept walking. They crossed the edge and entered the forest. The closely grown trees, gripping branches and thick foliage kept Sirius struggling to advance. He wondered how Tenseiga could walk so easily through it all without seeming hindered at all.

Then he realized she was walking _through_ the trees.

"How do you do that?"

She paused and looked at him.

"Do what?"

"You walk through the trees, as if they weren't here."

"They are here. I just decide that they should let me pass."

Sirius must have made quite a stunned face because she explained more:

"You are in spirit form. If you expect the trees to slow you down, then they will. If you expect the ground to hold your feet, then it will."

Sirius looked at her feet and realized she was floating some twenty centimeters above the ground.

He focused on the trees in front of him and decided that he would walk through them from now on.

His head hurt when he hit the trunk and he backed away, cursing.

"Patience, Sirius," Tenseiga's voice seemed to be restraining a chuckle. "One does not learn the ways of the spirit form in one hour."

He muttered a vague 'thanks' and settled back to dodging the trees.

"And what happens now?" he asked after a few minutes of silent walk.

"I bring you to my wielder and compel him to restore your life," she replied evenly. "Then we figure a way to send you back to your home world."

That sounded like a good plan, he supposed, even though he did not understand most of the implied knowledge she was throwing at him. He decided to clear up his main interrogation:

"Your… er… _wielder_ can bring me back to life?"

"With my power, most definitely."

There was not even a flutter of doubt in her voice and Sirius decided to believe her. She was the one who could fly through trees, after all. She must know what could and could not be done in this… reality.

Suddenly, Tenseiga froze.

Sirius walked to her and noticed her face was very pale. She looked fearful, aghast.

"What is it?" he asked, not sure if he really wanted to know.

"I cannot reintegrate my body," she murmured with horror.

"What… do you mean?"

She raised her left hand again, showing the red thread binding them.

"We are linked."

There was a touch of franticness underlying her voice and she abruptly accelerated. Sirius almost had to run to keep pace with her sudden speed.

"I cannot reintegrate to my body because, if I did so, the bond would either break or pull you in as well!" She was speaking very fast. "Our souls would either be fused or you would be lost to this reality! I cannot reintegrate my body because of the link, which means that I am stuck in spirit form, which means that I cannot use my powers and-…"

She froze again, stopping in mid-sentence. Her eyes were huge with terror and Sirius took hold of her shoulders, trying to soothe her panic.

"It's okay, Lady… it's okay, Tenseiga, it'll be fine, don't-…"

"Fine!" she shouted back, all control lost. "It will not be fine, human! You cannot understand! You have _no_ thought of how dire the situation is!"

Her golden irises were now rimmed with scarlet and Sirius backed away from the feral aura radiating from her.

"I cannot interact with my wielder in this spirit form!" she growled, tension coiling and building in her voice. A voice that was sounding more and more like a snarl. "I can neither ask him for help, nor explain why I am suddenly silent! I am powerless to assist him and powerless to warn him!"

The lines on her cheeks became ragged and her irises shrunk to dots of turquoise on a sea of scarlet. The snarl in her voice ascended to a roar and, for the first time, Sirius completely realized that Tenseiga was not human. Not human at all.

"He will walk into danger," she yowled furiously, "walk into battle, _trusting_ my power to be his, and I will fail to answer his summon! I will _fail_ him! What if he is wounded? What if he encounters my sister's wrath once again? I will be powerless and he will die because of my carelessness!"

Her voice broke and she crumpled to the floor, in tears.

Sirius walked to her and slowly crouched to her side. Carefully, with all the precautions he would have taken with a wounded wild beast, he circled her shoulder with his arm.

She whined but did not push away.

"Inu no Taisho," she whimpered with a broken voice, "I fail your bloodline. I fail my purpose, my duty to your heir… My blade is dull."

He had no words for her, but he knew that it was not words that she needed. He knew it from the cold years he had spent in Azkaban; how the warmth of someone could help deep against despair. So he just waited, offering what he had been denied; his simple presence in the hope that it would comfort her to know that she was not alone in her struggle.

XXXXXXXXX

 **And here's another chapter, folks! Just to mention that I won't be able to write much before next week, so I'll give you this one today.**

 **Tenseiga can easily get over-emotional, when Lord Fluff is concerned. I plan to make the most of it.**

 **Also to mention that, if I know how the story is going to unfold, I have no idea what pairings I'm going to do.**

 **Sincerely,**

 **Claywind**


	6. Priestess' Arrows

**Disclaimer:** I am neither J. K. Rowling, nor Rumiko Takahashi and I do NOT own the Harry Potter universe or the Inuyasha universe. No matter how much I want to.

 **Rating:** M, for adult themes, mild swearing, violence and lemon

 **Warnings:** Kagome swears. A lot.

XXXXXXXXX

 _Okay. Stay calm. Breathe. Keep the facts in mind._

Kagome took a deep breath.

 _One. I have no idea where I am, but I can guess when. If there's English spoken I should be in the modern era. No reason to panic. No. reason. to. panic. Argh! Where am I? No! No, no… Keep calm._

She gritted her teeth and stopped her brain that had decided to scream and run around her skull in circles. Locking the fear away, her eyes fell on the small dozen of people forming a semi-circle around her.

 _Two. I am not sure who these persons are or if they are hostile to me. Do NOT panic. I have no idea of what there are capable of. They don't have an aura, be it reiki or youki… and they're not clothed like melee fighters. They should not be a threat. After all, they did not attack me, did they? No, they didn't. Very good, brain. Keep going. Three…_

 _I sense youki._

That last one sent her on immediate high alert. She turned where the ghastly pulsation was coming from. Behind a black bricked wall, apparently. The sickening feeling of a cold hand gripping her stomach strengthened. Was its possessor growing more powerful? Then it must be releasing its true form.

 _Crap._

She had to stop him before it was too strong for her to fight without the support of her companions.

She charged through the crowd encircling her, dismissing the surprised cries. She would have to kill it fast. If she did not, there would be bystanders injured. The strangely clothed civilians – Had she fallen in the middle of a Halloween vampire larp? – parted around her as she ran towards a black gate, hoping it would bring her to the dark aura. She suddenly sensed danger to her right and almost stumbled in her instinctive jump to the left. From the corner of her eye she noticed a leather clad man with a creepy rolling eye pointing a wooden stick at her. She tensed and ran faster, ready to dodge whatever was coming, but a man cloaked in grey said something that stopped the eye-guy.

Then, Kagome had reached the already opened door and fled out of the room. Whatever this was about, it would have to wait until she had dealt with the rising youki and its source.

She burst into a dark hallway, almost sick at the nasty feeling creeping in her guts and quickly took in her surroundings. A vision quite similar to the previous room greeted her: black marble pavestones, black fireplaces – _fireplaces_? – lining the black bricked walls, black arched ceiling…

 _Black must have been in fashion. Either that or yellow was just too darn expensive._

The thought was pushed aside when she spotted a guy – a boy actually, he should be around her age – lying unconscious on the floor. He was moaning softly, twisted in pain, his breath labored.

He was the source of the youki.

 _Possession. Shit._

Even though she was able to deal with possession, she would have rather not had to fight while purifying someone's soul, since she would have to concentrate on the purification. And that would make her the easiest target a youkai could ask for.

 _Maybe if I zap him first with my reiki…_

That should at least do something. She hoped it would slow the entity possessing the boy. Or just stun it a bit, that could work too. She would improvise from there. She was very good at improvising. That and finding herself in impossible situations.

She lowered her bow but kept holding it – dropping your weapon in front of an evil youki was a brainless way to die – and concentrated her spiritual energy in her right hand.

Before she had taken one step further towards the collapsed figure, the youki rose, enshrouding its oily mists around the boy.

Her bow returned to firing position in a blink, the arrow aimed at the centre of the black fog. She summoned her reiki again. The sacred energy flowed through her arm to weave itself around the wooden shaft and coil around the stone tip. The arrow began to glow softly of a warm pink hue.

The youki expanded and twisted, forming an oily tentacle that began to crawl in her direction. She released the string and a bright line of pink briefly connected the archer and her target. The arrow tore through the disgusting appendage, eliciting a strident shriek and the black youki recoiled like a wounded beast. She frowned. That was not how youki was supposed to react. Instead of vanishing, the scattered blackness shrunk and gathered closer to its victim.

What the hell was that … _creature_? If it was a youkai, then she had never met one like that before. She did not like that. At all.

The boy moaned in pain while the youki grew anew, from him it seemed, to mimic a perverse human shape.

Now, that was something she knew how to deal with. A cold smile crept to her lips.

 _Perfect._

If that thing – whatever it was – was taking a physical body, her attacks would deal a lot more damage. She drew her second arrow, ignoring the nausea caused by the surging youki, and charged it to the maximum of its resistance. One last shot. She'd better not miss. Because, without her weapon, she didn't know what to do, except from getting the hell out of the way and let Inuyasha and Sango handle the close-combat.

The boy twisted hard on the stone and a strangled scream escaped his throat. To grow itself a body, the entity possessing him was draining his strength in a way that would have made torture seem like an acceptable alternative. Another throttled moan. Barely formed words that she recognized as a call for help.

Tears came to her eyes but she stood still.

With a full quiver, she could have prevented this. She would have fired, arrow after arrow, until the youki had exhausted itself and then purified the boy with her hands. But she did not have a full quiver. She had one arrow and she could not miss.

 _I'm sorry._

She decided that she would apologize to him afterwards, if both of them survived. The resolution gave her the strength to chase the tears away. Ignoring the distressed cries, she waited for the creature to finish restoring its body. Even if it was dangerous to wait that long, it was her only chance of killing it in one shot. The boy was almost screaming, now.

She clenched her jaw and ignored his voice.

The creature – not a youkai, now she was sure of it – shrouded its shape in thick, almost palpable darkness. When the black mists parted and unveiled its face, she could not repress a shudder of disgust. The skin was pale, akin to a corpse. Not a single hair on his head, no beard, no eyebrows, no eyelashes. Eyes like abysses of darkness, two holes outlining the faint hint of a nose. The pale imitation of a face was deeply more unsettling than any youkai she had encountered.

There was something disturbingly familiar about him. It was the eyes, she realized. The cold dead remorseless eyes.

A black, oily energy, filled with prideful spite and inhuman cruelty crashed against her senses and she had to erect a barrier to avoid fainting. With horror, she realized that she knew this particular despicable aura. The taste of bile assaulted her tongue and she had to summon all of her will to prevent her stomach from emptying itself.

It did not matter if he did not look the same. It did not matter if he was five centuries out of time. It did not matter, because she could sense his rotten soul, because his youki was enough to tell her who she was facing.

She glared at him, her reiki surging around her at the threat, her eyes filled with indescribable hatred.

"Naraku…"

He had the decency to look scared. No, she corrected. Not scared. Surprised.

"You vile monster," she hissed, "from which slimy ditch did you crawl out of this time?"

He did not seem to understand her.

 _He doesn't know me? But how can that be? He's definitely Naraku, I know I'm not mistaken-…_

The realization hit her like a train wreck. Hard in the guts.

 _Shit._

She was facing a reincarnation.

 _No. No! I am NOT doing this. I have yet to terminate his sorry ass in the past; I am NOT hopping in for a second round! No way. No fucking way._

Oblivious to her inner rebellion, Naraku pointed a bone-white stick at her:

" _Avada Kedavra_ ," he stated nonchalantly.

A green beam erupted from the tip of the stick. It sprang towards her and clashed harshly against her barrier.

The burst of pain tore through her mind and made her legs go weak. With widened eyes, she saw her barrier shatter around her, fragments of fading pink mixing with sickly green sparkles. She had no idea what had hit her, but she had her doubts that the green light was no good.

 _He's got shield-breaking ranged attacks, now? She mentally rolled her eyes. Wonderful. This day just keeps getting better and better._

Naraku was looking at her, apparently perplexed. It looked as if he hadn't expected her to block the attack. Well, if he did not remember that she had powers, she would be more than happy to remind him. She decided that a confident smile would be an excellent and snarky payback for the pain in her mind. That, and she erected another barrier.

That green beam screamed danger.

" _Avada Kedavra,_ " Naraku said again, more forcefully, this time.

The green beam crashed once more against her mind, searing cold splicing her brain in half. This time, however, she knew what was coming. Her barrier shattered under the impact, but she poured more reiki into it and summoned it back in a second. From the outside, it should have appeared as if the barrier hadn't suffered any damage. She looked up at Naraku, her defiant grin never leaving her face. Hatred filled his eyes – hatred and frustration – and she smiled some more.

 _Take that, you arrogant bastard._

Interiorly, though, she was scared shitless. And when he raised his stick a third time, she somehow knew that something a bit more different than greenly sparkles was on its way.

" _Confringo_."

 _Red? Crap._

Interpreting the code coloring, she evaluated that this attack should probably be too dangerous for her to block. She jumped to the side, but the red beam grazed the outer perimeter of the shielding pink energy.

Her barrier burst into flames.

And exploded.

She was sent flying across the hallway, gravity pulling at her guts with a sickening intensity. She braced herself for the upcoming harsh encounter with the rapidly approaching wall but it never came. Instead, her momentum slowed to a halt and she floated slowly to the ground.

Stunned by the blast, she tried to focus her eyes and they eventually fell on a tall bearded old man with the most amazing robes and pointy hat she had ever seen. "Wizard" screamed a voice from a forgotten corner of her mind, and she was too happy to comply with the appellation.

If that guy was not a wizard, Naraku was a ballerina.

Speaking of the bastard, he had not moved since he had blasted her. Motionless, he was currently directing his attention towards her rescuer, but his eyes were sometimes flickering back in her direction. She tried to get up, but her body refused to move. Her muscles were dumb and she could not feel anything from her limbs, as if her nervous system had decided to stop all transmissions. When sensation came back to her members, she wished they had not. The scorching pain told her that the previous flames had not only burned her barrier.

The wizard said a few words. A question, maybe? Naraku responded in the same language something that sounded like a threat. His tone was insolent, sardonic.

Then he attacked. With a lot of fire.

The old wizard waved it off like if it were a joke and she smiled interiorly.

She did not grasp the limits and possibilities of this new world she had fallen into, but she knew tropes, and that peculiar one was universal:

You do _not_ mess with the wise old wizard.

She watched them fight, awed at the power they were displaying. Slowly, little black dots began obscuring her field of vision.

She opened her eyes again to see the old wizard kneeling next to the possessed boy. She must have fainted and missed the battle. She closed her eyelids a while. The searing of her skin was killing her. She was not new to pain and wounds, but it was the first time she had endured severe burns. It did not feel nice.

Her eyes scanned the hallway for her enemy. Finding none, she looked back at the old wizard, still kneeling.

 _Did he kill him?_

She shut the question down before hope was out of control. She already knew the answer too well. She knew because, as much as she hated to admit it, there was a link between the monster and her.

And that link was not severed yet.

Darkness was enshrouding her again, offering a painless hug to her tired mind and her resolve to stay conscious was beginning to dissolve. She blinked slowly, fighting against the exhaustion to ponder about what the old wizard would do to her if she fainted now. He had saved her life, so it would be safe to assume he would continue protecting her. Maybe? Probably? At this point, she was too tired to think paranoiac anymore which was, according to her habits, probably a mistake. But she decided to trust the stranger anyway.

He was a wise old wizard, after all.

While she was drifting away, she did a quick check of the known facts.

 _One. Naraku is back._

 _Two. He uses magic._

 _Three. I'm going to kill him._

Slowly, the darkness embraced her, leaving only a last ephemeral thought to briefly cross her mind.

 _This time, he's going to stay dead…_

XXXXXXXXX

 **Ta-daaaaaaaaa! Hi guys! It's been an incredibly tiring week for me, but I've managed to make up for the very shor last Kagome chapter. This one should satiate your hunger for story a bit, I hope. I'm going to try and establish a dayly writing rythm so as to update every 5 days or each week.**

 **Next chapter should be Hermione dealing with supernatural medieval Japan. Yeah, the story is basicall going to be an alternate cycle of Kagome and Hermione chapters, with less frequent Sirius &Tenseiga inputs.**

 **As mentioned previously, I am not entirely decided yet on the pairings I'm going to do. If you have any preference or suggestion, feel free to mention them.**

 **Sincerely,**

 **Claywind**


	7. Witch and Books

**Disclaimer:** I am neither J. K. Rowling, nor Rumiko Takahashi and I do NOT own the Harry Potter universe or the Inuyasha universe. No matter how much I want to.

 **Rating:** M, for adult themes, mild swearing, violence and lemon

 **Warnings:** This is probably going to turn into a crack fic.

XXXXXXXXX

Hermione's brain was on the verge of giving up. It had been trying to figure out what was going on for the past few hours and had for the most part utterly failed.

After what could only be described as a mime duo, she had realized that her attempt at communication with the akita-eared boy – she had at least understood that his name was Inuyasha – would not bring her the information she needed. Apparently arrived to the same conclusion, he had gotten up and invited her to follow.

Now, after a short walk among the woods, they had arrived at a small village. While following her guide, Hermione was frantically searching her memory for anything to compare it with what was under her eyes.

From what she could observe, she was somewhere in Asia. The villagers' features, their clothing, their houses, their accent… it was all very clear. Sadly for her, she had never bothered reading books about Asia – okay, to be fair, she had read a _few_ – so she had trouble determining where exactly she was. It was not like Asia was a small part of the world.

Proceeding methodically, she eventually ruled out Indonesia (which was way too southern) Taiwan (which was a small island with a high population density) and the Philippines (which was an archipelago and too much to the south). That left her with Eastern China, Korea and Japan.

The fact that Inuyasha had akita ears and that akitas were a Japanese breed of dog was really not enough to definitely settle for Japan. He could very well have travelled or the hex he was under could have been cast by a Japanese wizard. Tough Hermione was growing more and more unconvinced that the dog ears – or his general appearance – were the result of a curse. Apart from the quite obvious yellow eyes and white-silver hair, there was something in the way he moved that was inherently not entirely human. Perhaps it was the fact that he seemed to waste no movements when he walked, showing an absolute mastery over himself. There was a sort of grace in it; a grace that reminded Hermione of a feline and that could not be the result of a curse. She did not know how to put it, but she was under the conviction that he had to have been born with it. She looked at his back, carefully asserting her conclusions, and realizing that it was mesmerizing to watch him pace like that. Her mind assured her that he was human, but her instincts whispered that there was something else.

Something wild and dangerous.

Inuyasha guided her around the village to the bottom of an impressive stone stairs. He shouted something at a small wooden hut camped next to the first steps. Of course, Hermione did not understand what he said, but it started with " _Oï!_ " and she guessed he was calling to other people. She was proven right when three persons came out from the door. Hermione's eyes travelled from an elderly woman clothed in white and red to a dark haired man robed in deep purple and finally landed on a woman wearing a green and pink – _Is that a kimono? It looks like one…_ – piece of clothing. She had long dark brown hair held in a loose pony tail and was the first person to give her a true, warm smile. Hermione relaxed a bit, realizing she had held her breath, and responded in kind, most certainly reassured to meet some feminine comfort.

An ivory, red-eyed, _two-tailed_ cat jumped in the woman's arms and climbed her to perch itself on her shoulder. Hermione looked at it. The cat looked back and emitted a jaded meow. The witch remembered seeing a picture of this somewhere in a book about fairy tales from all around the world. The creature was called a _bakenekko_ , if she remembered correctly, and was part of Japanese folklore. That was now at least three clues pointing to the Far East Island… With a decided nod, Hermione decided she was in Japan.

 _I know where I am. Good. What do I do, now?_

The elderly woman spoke and Hermione turned her attention to her. Even though she did not understand the language, she got the main idea: she was invited to enter the hut.

Once inside, Hermione decided that there had been enough dawdling around. She sat crossed legged on the wooden tiles and opened her pouch.

It was a pale purple mokeskin pouch that should be around a hand in length. She rummaged through it, searching for something that could help her, be it an item or an idea. She used it mainly to carry her books around, and finding her potion textbook suddenly reminded her of a few special books she had ordered a month ago and only gotten her hands on it three days before… before everything went crazy.

She paled.

She had left in the middle of a fight against death eaters. Were her friends alright? Were they even alive? Anguish flowed through her system and her hands began trembling. They could be dead, right now, and she would not even know.

A hand squeezed her shoulder and she turned to her right, to meet yellow eyes.

 _Actually, they're gold. Not yellow._

Crouched beside her, he did not say a word. She looked around to find out that the discussion had ceased and that the three other persons were looking at her with concerned eyes.

She blushed and quickly shook the hand off her shoulder. He backed away, looking mildly surprised by her reaction, but not actually offended or hurt and she went back to searching the innards of her pouch. She rummaged for a while under the careful observation of the four until she eventually extracted a book from the small bundle.

On the cover, printed in a slightly stylized writing one could read "The Standard Book of Spells: Grade six". A bit lower, the name of the author appeared too, printed in small capitals: "Miranda Goshawk". It was the textbook they were going to use for the next year. She had ordered all of the next year textbooks by owl, because she had planned to study them during summer, so as not to fall behind. Now that she was stranded alone somewhere in Japan, she could not congratulate herself enough for doing so.

She opened it at the end and quickly scanned the pages of the index. She could feel the four Japanese persons looking at her and she could not mute the part of her mind who was commenting that her behavior must look very suspect to them. Her situation would most certainly not improve if they decided she was crazy. Blushing madly, she kept looking until she found it.

 _There. Page 58._

She went to the page in question and read through the description.

" _Polylinguis_. Invented by Gilgamus Peregrineroy in 1537. Allows the caster to speak the target's language for duration of 22 hours plus or minus 84 minutes."

She looked down at the wand and tone instructions. The motions were numerous but not that complex. It was a spell that was hard to remember but not hard to cast.

 _Seems doable,_ she thought, while taking her wand from her robe's inner pocket.

She had to practice it a few times before getting the motions right, but when she did, she did not feel any hesitation. She pointed her wand at Inuyasha and articulated:

" _Polylinguis._ "

At first, nothing happened and she thought she had missed a gesture. But then, as she was raising her wand a second time, a thought popped into her mind.

 _'_ _Dog demon'. Inuyasha means 'dog demon'._

That was the drop that unleashed the ocean. A wave of knowledge suddenly washed over her, submerging her mind with sounds, words, grammar and linguistic features. She dropped her wand and took her head in her hand.

"Oï, wench! Are you okay?"

She looked up at the dog-eared boy and grinned.

"Just fine. Thank you."

The language barrier was not a problem anymore.

XXXXXXXXX

 **So here it is! Chapter 7. I hope you enjoyed it, I sure did like writing it down.**

 **I also read your replies about the pairing questions and I will use some of the propositions made.**

 **As you may have realized by now, the story does not have one central protagonist. Kagome and Hermione are going to be faced with challenges meant for them only and Sirius is also going to play an important part. Sesshomaru will arrive in time (don't you worry, his Fluffiness shall not stay out forever) but I will need to put a few more things in place before he can make his grand entrance.**

 **Since the main character of each chapter is alternating every time, I will do my best to avoid the cliffhangers. Keep in mind that** ** _try_** **is the keyword here.**

 **Don't hesitate to review, it makes me happy. And you want your author happy. Trust me.**

 **Sincerely,**

 **Claywind**


	8. Wandering Ghosts

**Disclaimer:** I am neither J. K. Rowling, nor Rumiko Takahashi and I do NOT own the Harry Potter universe or the Inuyasha universe. No matter how much I want to.

 **Rating:** M, for adult themes, mild swearing, violence and lemon

 **Warnings:** This is probably going to turn into a crack fic.

XXXXXXXXX

Night had fallen over the forest. A white shape was moving between the dark silhouettes of the trees. Even though the moonlight and the stars did not reach through the dark canopy, the pale, long silhouette appeared to be shimmering with silvery light. On top of it, could be distinguished a small black shape that, upon further scrutiny, resembled strangely a human body. The tree parted for a brief moment and the two shapes entered a clearing. The outline of a horse-sized white dog could now be made, a thinly built man on its back.

"Can you remind me why we're walking?" asked the man in a tired voice.

"We are not walking," the huge white dog replied with a slightly sarcastic feminine tune that did not match at all the impressive fangs that glinted in its mouth.

The man sighed again, throwing a look at the feet of the white dog that were performing a walking motion… thirty inches over the ground.

"Right. Can you remind me why we're floating?"

"You're slower than an imp-toad," replied the dog with a smug grin that the man did not see although the smugness was hearable anyway. "A blind grandmother imp-toad. So we float."

The man sighed for a third time, annoyance clearly audible now, and spoke again:

"A what… no, wait, could you just answer my question, please?"

"I could."

Again, the smug grin was audible.

"I'd like it if you stopped messing with my head, Tenseiga. Now can you answer my question? You told me you could teleport us directly to wherever your body is, no matter the distance."

"I did."

"So, why are we walking?"

"Floating."

Sirius remained silent, decided not to enter Tenseiga's game. He tightened his grip on her fur, hoping she would answer. Eventually.

After her outburst, she had regained her composure and apologized to him. The formality of her bow and the stiffness in her voice had been a hint that she was truly embarrassed to have broken apart like she had. He had abundantly reassured her that he saw no shame in crying a bit from time to time. She had thanked him very softly, very politely and, when she had gotten up, he was sure he had seen her blush. Dusting some imaginary dust from her sleeves, she had then turned into a white dog and asked him to hop on.

The snarky comments had soon followed.

Sirius liked dogs – he hadn't chosen the dog as his animagus form for nothing – but he had to admit that mounting a horse-sized white beast with sneering wits, was not the most quieting experience he had ever went through. Her sudden change in personality was more than a bit perplexing, but he too did not think and act the same way when he morphed. So, he decided not to worry about it too much. He guessed that she was trying to get rid of the embarrassment.

He himself distinctly remembered – when he was still a student back in Hogwarts – having morphed a few time to blow off some steam.

"I can only teleport to my body," Tenseiga suddenly mentioned, extracting him from his memories. "And I don't know where my body is right now. Maybe we're very close. Maybe it is weeks of travel away. I have no way to know, so I'm not taking the risk of going off-tracks."

"Off-tracks?" Sirius inquired.

"Yes. There's someone I need to talk to before I bring you to my wielder. He is an old hermit, and he provided the wood for my scabbard. I know he would be able to see and hear us… and he might also be willing to provide some answers about the bond."

Sirius' eyes fell on the red thread linking his pinky with the dog's massive paw.

"You think?"

Tenseiga nodded.

"He's very knowledgeable. And old. Very, very old. Older than my lord and wielder, older than the Inu no Taisho, even older than elder Myoga."

The names meant nothing to him, but he assumed they were of old persons. His eyes fell on the pale fur under his fingers. So Tenseiga's wielder was an old man… Why would he need a sword? Unable to find a reason, he shrugged the question aside and mentally filed the information.

Tenseiga's muzzle lifted to point before them, at the towering shape of a small mountain. Its dark silhouette was hiding the night sky, like the set piece of a shadow play.

"You see that hill?" she asked and he gave a grunt in acknowledgement. "Bokuseno resides on top of it. That is the reason we are floating. I would rather walk for a while than risk to prolong our travel by teleporting us to the opposite of the country."

Sirius nodded. It made sense. Especially since she had admitted not being able to speak with her wielder in spirit form. Even if the man in question possessed the power to resurrect Sirius, it would do no good if they could not ask him for help once they would have reached him. What would they do? Haunt him?

So it was a lot less annoyed Sirius that let himself be carried across the forest on the back of a horse-sized white dog spirit.

A good thirty minutes later – he did not carry a watch but he had a good sense of time – they had reached the hill and begun the slow ascension. When the ground regained a mostly horizontal feature, Tenseiga gently but firmly asked him to get down and use his own feet. She kept her dog form but her pace did slow down significantly.

"There are not many people with whom I can interact," she woofed softly, "and Bokuseno is very close to me. I remained with him for a quite while, after the Inu no Taisho's death…"

Her steps slowed and she paused. Sirius raised an arm and stroked the soft fur of her shoulder. She turned her massive head to him. Her golden eyes had become pools of cold ore. A world of unspoken pain quivered in her silence.

"Will you … tell me?" he whispered.

Her ears slumped down a bit.

"My maker, Totosai, was honor-bound by his promise to the Inu no Taisho to hand me and my sister down to his two sons. Me, to his eldest, and my sister, to his youngest. But Totosai the blacksmith is terrified of the Inu no Taisho's eldest son. I believe he is even more so nowadays. Knowing that my lord and wielder would eventually come and visit Bokuseno for advice, Totosai left me with him."

Sirius couldn't help but comment:

"That wielder of yours sounds like a scary person."

A glint of anger sparkled in her eye and she stopped, growling in the back of her throat. He took a few steps back when he realized that she was growling _at him_ , the fur on her back a lot spikier than before.

"Totosai is a _coward_ ," she snarled with aggravation. "A quivering, disrespectful, blabbering coward. My lord and wielder is nothing but perfect and anyone fool enough to state the contrary should be corrected swiftly."

Sirius gazed at her, flabbergasted at the sudden change of tone and demeanor. He raised his hands in a defensive posture:

"I'm sorry, Tenseiga," he began very fast but slowed his words when she seemed to calm down. "I didn't mean to offend you."

She sighed. A long, deep, wolfish sigh.

"No, it is I who apologize," she mumbled. "I should not shift Totosai's mistaken views onto you."

"It's okay," Sirius replied, offering her a smile. "I guess that your wielder must be some nice, great old man, since you speak so highly of him."

"Not as old as I am," interrupted a muffled voice not far from them.

Sirius started but the giant white dog at his side barked loudly and jumped in the direction of the voice. Sirius barely had the time to turn his head to follow the movement when the red thread pulled at his pinky and he was sent flying behind her.

He landed on soft grass and sat up straight, a bit dazed. They were in a round clearing about twenty meters wide and, in the middle of it, there was a gigantic tree towering over them. At first sight, it looked like a magnolia tree – not that Sirius was an expert botanist – but the resemblance with normal flora stopped there. It was big, about a hundred feet high, maybe more. Probably one of the biggest trees Sirius had ever seen. And its trunk was incredibly large for a tree of this species. Six men could not have encircled it with their arms.

Sirius got up and walked toward it, carefully avoiding tripping on the roots weaving in and out of the earth, as if there was not any place left underground. They looked like thick dark man-eating snakes. When he got closer, he noticed that the bark of the tree was rugged and scarred, presenting countless rifts and fissures, like rivers of dark along the coarse wood. But even without looking at it, Sirius could have told that this tree meant business.

There was an ominous aura enshrouding it, enshrouding the whole glade. And in Sirius' heart was growing the persisting feeling that something was out of place. That something was amiss and about to happen. That the tree was an entity of power.

And Tenseiga was wagging her tail at it.

"So you finally decide to pay a visit to your old uncle?" and elderly voice said and Sirius looked at the place where it had come from. He froze.

The tree had a face. A wrinkled old face, the size of a dinner plate, which stood out in the bark like the moon in the sky.

"I am sorry I did not come before," responded Tenseiga with a soft whine. "I could not abandon my wielder."

She was talking to a tree as if everything was normal and Sirius interiorly shrugged. He would just have to pretend that he wasn't talking to a tree… and in the company of a horse-sized dog, for that matter. Reluctantly, he convinced the running-in-circle part of his mind to just roll along with it. Then, he realized that he was starting to enjoy the madness, and that was never a good sign.

The wrinkled old face frowned its beak-like nose, bringing him back to the matter at hand:

"Protect me from the dogs and their loyalty…" the tree muttered in an obviously faked irritation. "Well, now that you've returned, have some manners, will you? Show me your pretty face instead of hiding it under this pelt."

If dogs could blush, then Sirius just witnessed one.

Tenseiga yelped and her white fur seemed to whirl around her like a drape and revealed her human features. Long silvery hair cascaded from her ponytail, their long strands swirling around her slender frame. The pale skin of her cheeks was harboring a now fainting blush … only her golden eyes did not change, keeping their color and depth.

Once again, Sirius was struck by how beautiful she was.

"My, my," said the tree. "I remember you when you where a small girl running around in my branches. What a beautiful young lady you have become."

The blush came back on her cheek, spreading to the tip of her pointy ears and deepening the color of her indigo markings. Sirius had to repress a snicker at the view. Her personality was definitely not the same when she was in human form. A lot more shy and… lady-like.

The old tree must have heard him, because its piercing gaze settled on him:

"And you found yourself a mate?" it stated quietly. "That is unexpected of you. But he appears rather nice, you chose well."

This time, the word "blush" could no longer be accurately applied as Tenseiga's skin turned redder than the scarlet cherry blossoms on her sleeves and she actually tried to hide her face with her hands. Which did not work because – Sirius remarked – she had such small hands.

"H-he is not my m-mate!" she stammered and Sirius could not repress a slight feeling of disappointment at the definite rejection. He wondered why. It was not like he had any views on her. Okay, _perhaps_ he found her pretty. Very much so. But he needed to be realistic: there was no possible future for him and _the_ _spirit form of a sword_.

"But you are bonded," retorted Bokuseno evenly. "The red threads of destiny do not tie strangers together without a reason."

Tenseiga eventually regained her composure and replied with a controlled expression:

"That is what I have come to ask you, dear uncle," There was a hint of fear in her voice. "You see, strange events have happened, events that I have yet to make sense of… and I hoped that perhaps I could count on your wisdom."

The look in the tree's eyes softened.

"Tell me everything, child."

And she did. She told him of the call she had felt and of her encounter with Sirius in one of the numerous beyond, she told him of the scarlet thread and of her deductions about its significance. But most importantly, she told him of her inability to go back to her body, of her fear that she would fail her wielder.

The coal sky was turning to ash, when Tenseiga eventually stopped talking. She turned to Sirius who had not dared interrupt her. At one point during her speech, she had forgotten that he was here and spoken from the bottom of her heart to the only person who she trusted entirely and even more. Now, she realized that she had allowed Sirius quite a prolonged look into her privacy and she felt ashamed and strangely euphoric at the idea. Had he known she existed, Lord Sesshomaru would never have approved of her conduct. She chastised herself mentally for lowering her guard and decided to be more careful in the future. It would not do for her to disappoint her wielder.

Bokuseno remained pensive for a while.

"Tenseiga," he eventually stated, "I believe that you were right not to return to your body. The bond would pull this Sirius in with you and the result would be disastrous."

Sirius could not help but ask.

"What would happen?"

Bokuseno looked at him, gravely:

"You are a dead soul, not a spirit. If you were to enter a physical body, you would be fused within it. Forever trapped, because your dead soul actively craves a new vessel for life. And since the Sword of Heaven is an inanimate object, it would become a prison for your soul of mortal."

The tree paused a while and its piercing gaze seemed to look at his very essence.

"You would wither, imprisoned in the steel, leaving you a husk of your former self. And Tenseiga would be greatly hurt in the process. Her powers may even be taken away."

Tenseiga muffled a short gasp. Losing her blade and her powers? The idea was too dreadful to even contemplate.

"Then what can we do, uncle? How do we break the thread?"

Again, the old tree stared in the distance, his silence covering them like a blanket.

"You must find something that can slice through anything, something whose sole, unique and most basic purpose is to _cut_. And then, you must use it to sever the thread that binds you. But I am afraid I do not know what on earth could accomplish such a feat. Like I said before, the ties of destiny are not easily broken."

Tenseiga turned slowly her eyes to Sirius. He was already looking at her, a look of horror in his eyes that must reflect her own.

If the most knowledgeable being she knew could not help them, then who could?

Sirius, for his part, had a grimmer thought swamping his mind.

He was dead and he was stuck. He was going to stay dead. There was no way out and he might even die a lot more than he already was. And, in the process, he might cause the death of someone else, someone who had been one of the nicest persons he had ever met.

His eyes fell on the vaporous red string encircling his finger.

 _Why?_

XXXXXXXXX

 **And here it is. An extra-long chapter on Sirius and Tenseiga, since we are not going to see them for a while... at least, that's the plan for now. Maybe I'll change my mind and you'll have had an extra long chapter for nothing. I'm sure you won't mind.**

 **Anyway, I'll begin writing chapter 9 shortly, but it's going to be a complex chapter for me to write, so it might take a bit of time to come by. I'll try not to make it more than a week, though.**

 **I must thank you for your answers regarding the pairings, they actually decided me to do one I had not intented to do, so you _did_ influence something, be happy! Of course, being the sadistic author that I am, I will not disclose which pairing I am speaking of... let's just mention that it'll imply one of the Inu no Taisho's children...**

 **With all that fluff raised, I wish you the best,**

 **Sincerely,**

 **Claywind**


	9. Priestess' Exorcism

**Disclaimer:** I am neither J. K. Rowling, nor Rumiko Takahashi and I do NOT own the Harry Potter universe or the Inuyasha universe. No matter how much I want to.

 **Rating:** M, for adult themes, mild swearing, violence and lemon

 **Warnings:** Kagome. Swearing. A lot.

XXXXXXXXX

Kagome woke up between a comfortable mattress and soft, warm blankets. Her subconscious made her immediately relax the muscles she had tensed at her waking in an unfamiliar place. Bed meant modern era. Modern era meant safety. She blinked slowly, her eyes meeting a stone ceiling. She looked around her but to her frustration a creamy curtain had been pulled around her bed, shutting her away from the world. She slowly sat up and winced. The skin on her arms and face felt strangely sore. She looked at her forearms, searching for a wound, but the skin seemed perfectly healthy.

Puzzled, she looked up again. The high stone arches of the ceiling made it look like the nave of a cathedral. Or a castle. What was she doing in a castle?

The last events came back to her and, suddenly, being in a castle was the last thing on her mind. She growled.

Naraku was back.

If someone had been around to look at her, then they would have backed away, because the only way to describe her expression was _feral_.

But no one was there and she quickly recomposed her features to an annoyed frown.

 _Okay, summary of the facts: Naraku is back. He can use long ranged attacks. He can pierce my barriers… He can make my barriers explode. _

She sighed.

 _Fuck my life._

Remembering the fire, she looked down at her supposedly burned arms, wondering how in hell she had healed that fast. Her skin had long lost its original pallor and she was now slightly tanned by the many days she had spent outwards. A few paler scars crossed her arms, reminders of branches she had not dodged in time and small cuts she had endured. But there was not a trace of what the fire had done.

 _Maybe I wasn't burned that badly? Or I was brought to some kind of very competent healer…_

Once again, she took a look around her.

 _White blankets, white curtains… it looks a lot like a hospital. I should probably check._

In fact, she should have checked her surroundings the moment she had woken up and she smacked herself mentally for her sloppiness. Sango would have disapproved and she would have been entirely right.

Extending her senses, Kagome determined that she was in a big room and that there was no one else around. However, the squared shapes aligned on the walls at regular intervals – and that she deduced as beds – confirmed that she was in some sort of hospital or dormitory.

 _Well, I'm healed. There's no point in lying down. It's modern era, so I should be safe. Let's explore._

She pulled back the blanket and immediately shivered at the low temperature. Then her eyes fell on her body and she frowned. Her school uniform was gone. Instead, she was wearing some sort of ivory linen night gown completed with long pants. Both were thick and probably the reason why she wasn't currently freezing. She blushed a bit at the idea that someone had undressed her while she was asleep but she did not make a huge fuss about it. She must have sported severe burns and she knew for having had to clean numerous wounds – especially on a reckless hanyou – that it was a lot easier to do without clothes in the way.

She looked at the side of the bed and was relieved to see her yellow backpack, quiver and bow. Of course, the quiver was empty, but the simple presence of the bow was enough to reassure her. She had survived through a lot with it and she had long gone past the point where its absence would not make her feel uneasy. She began to get up, but she sat back the instant her left foot grazed the stone floor.

 _Damn it's cold._

She shivered violently and searched the vicinity of the bed, eventually finding her shoes at its feet. After a bit of gymnastics to reach them without having to actually get down – which implied the use of her bow to slide the shoes to the side – Kagome could eventually get up without losing her feet to the sub-zero temperature of the floor.

"To think that I slay demons on a daily basis…" she mocked herself.

She walked to the curtain and pulled it open, revealing a row of empty neatly made beds.

 _Yup. Hospital._

In front of her, stood a huge double door that probably led outside of the designated hospital. She began walking towards it but a tug at her senses informed her that someone was approaching. Rotating to face the upcoming presence, she turned her eyes in the direction of a small door. Her bow was in her hand but she did not raise it. The person coming was probably not hostile and it was etiquette to refrain from threatening someone who might have just nursed you back to health. After all, if they had really meant her harm, they could have done so while she was unconscious. And why would they have healed her just to kill her afterwards?

So it was with a readied stance that she waited for the small door to open. Ready, but not tense.

A grey-haired woman entered the room, a dozen of bottles and vials floating after her. She was wearing a white apron over red-brown robes and a strange white hair-cloth. She stopped dead in her tracks when she noticed Kagome and the bottles in her back clang together softly.

" _May I know what you're doing out of your bed, young lady?_ " the woman asked while making her way to the priestess at a swift pace.

Since Kagome had been expecting English, the words did not seem as foreign as they had been before. She had understood the question – as well as the reproach underlying the strict voice – but she was at a loss of terminology on how to answer.

" _I… wake up,_ " she began tentatively. " _I am not…er…_ " damn, what was the word for "burned", again?

The strict look on the woman's face softened and Kagome felt a bit relieved.

" _…hurt anymore…_ " she eventually settled for.

The woman raised a skeptical eyebrow and her eyes assessed Kagome in what could only be described as a professional way. It was obvious she disagreed with the opinion stated and Kagome understood that this woman was the person who had nursed her back to health.

" _How did you… ahem… heal the… me?_ "

The woman smiled warmly, reaching for something inside her robes.

" _Before I delve into a lengthy explanation, I think I'll make sure we understand each other._ "

This time, Kagome was a lot less sure of what was said, but she did not have the time to reflect upon her lack of mastery of English, because the woman pointed a wooden stick at her.

" _Poly-_ "

A pink barrier crackled into existence, quickly followed by a second and a third layer. Inside of it, Kagome had assumed a fighting stance, her bow buzzing with reiki.

If there was one thing she had understood about this world, it was that the wooden sticks were weapons. And she was not going to let a weapon be pointed at her without reacting.

The look on the woman's face, however, was one of puzzlement. She slowly lowered her stick and walked straight to Kagome, stopping only one foot away from the crackling barriers. She leaned toward the priestess, her eyes narrowing dangerously, and asked in a brisk tone:

" _And what exactly do you think the school nurse is going to do to you, young lady?_" Kagome was not sure of what the woman had said, but she sounded offended " _I want to cast a spell that will help us understand each other. Now drop those pink shields._ "

The last words carried an authority that immediately reminded Kagome of her mother. It was the kind of tone that said " _you do what I say, and you'd better not argue_ ". Kagome looked around her, her mind racing for a solution… and she did the only thing possible.

She dropped her barriers.

" _Good girl._ " the woman smiled and pointed her stick at her again.

Kagome tensed, but fought back the urge to duck out of the way.

" _Polylinguis._ "

To Kagome's surprise, no colored beam erupted from the stick. It was probably better that way. If there had been one, she was not sure she could have forced herself to stand still.

"Well, that's one thing taken care of," stated the woman in perfect Japanese. "Do you understand me, now?"

Kagome nodded, too baffled to form words. Had the woman just learned her language by pointing a stick at her?

The said woman clapped her hands and motioned her towards her bed.

"Perfect. Go back to your bed, then. You're going to freeze to death if you stay in these pajamas."

Kagome was about to protest that she was perfectly fine – and old enough to take care of herself, thank you very much – but the woman gave her a glance.

A glance of doom.

All protests died in her throat and Kagome took the direction of her bed, followed closely by the healer. When she had half buried herself under the blankets – and realized that, yes, she had actually been quite cold – the woman sat at the side of her bed and patted her hand:

"I guess that your head is bubbling with questions, is it not?"

"Ahem, yes," Kagome replied before straightening. "But first, may I know your name? I would like to thank you properly."

The woman raised an eyebrow.

"My name's Poppy Pomfrey, but the students here only call me Madam Pomfrey."

Kagome bowed her head.

"I am Higurashi Kagome. You're the person who healed me, right?"

"Yes. It _is_ part of my work as Hogwarts' school nurse."

There was a glint of irony in her words and Kagome smiled a bit. She bowed again to the woman, more deeply this time.

"Then I thank you for healing me, Madam Pomfrey. I think you might have saved my life."

Madam Pomfrey waved her hand, dismissively:

"Oh, don't worry about that," she declared lightly. "I've cured many reckless wizards in this school, and, with Mister Finnigan around, you're far from being the first case of burns I've had to deal with."

Kagome frowned a bit at the trivializing reaction of the nurse. She was accustomed to take life debts seriously. But then, if her savior did not want to make a fuss about it, she would comply.

"Also," Madam Pomfrey declared after a few seconds of inner thinking, "I believe that the one saving your life was not me, but professor Dumbledore. From what I have heard, without him, you would not have made it out of the Ministry…"

 _Dumbledore? She must be referring to the old wizard who fought Naraku._

There were not many other persons she remembered playing an active role in saving her butt. The only other guy present was…

"The boy!" Kagome suddenly exclaimed, nearly jumping up out of the bed. "Is he alright? Did he survive?"

Madam Pomfrey shooed her back into the cushion.

"I suppose you're referring to Mister Potter? Such an irresponsible boy… I've stopped counting the number of times he's ended up in my care. Yes, yes, he survived. He left the infirmary a few hours ago-"

"I have to go to him immediately," interrupted Kagome. "He's possessed and may be a danger to anyone around him!"

The nurse gave her a bewildered look.

"Calm yourself, young lady. Mister Potter is absolutely fine. I've examined him myself and I can assure you that he is in perfect health."

Kagome shook her head, realizing that she was going to have to convince the nurse, and she really did not have the time or the energy for that.

"No, he is not," she asserted in her most assured voice. "Please, trust me. That boy was possessed, I can tell because I'm a priestess. There's a dark youki that has taken root in his soul and it can come back at any moment. It is not the kind of thing that will just heal on its own. I've encountered it several times and I know how to counter it. _Please_ , let me help him."

Madam Pomfrey eyed the young woman in front of her. Mister Potter had seemed perfectly healthy and she was almost absolutely certain that Miss Higurashi, no matter how much conviction she put in her assertions, was wrong. However, Poppy Pomfrey was not one to gamble with her patients' life. If there was but the shadow of a doubt that their health could be threatened, she was bound to act.

There was also the fact that Miss Higurashi had performed a feat of wandless and wordless magic in front of her no more than a few minutes ago. This demonstrated, if not power, a considerable knowledge in the arcane arts. The possibility that the young girl knew more than her age would lead to believe was also to take into account.

And all of this decided her to simply accept the girl's request.

"Very well, I shall go fetch Mister Potter. I suppose it can do him no harm to be double-checked. In the meantime, you will stay in your bed and not wander around catching a cold, are we clear?"

The girl acquiesced gravely:

"Cristal clear."

Madam Pomfrey nodded in appreciation and rose to her feet. She waved her hand and sent to a nearby shelf the bottles that had been well-behaving-ly waiting next to the feet of the bed. She then crossed the hall and exited the infirmary, looking for the portraits in the corridor. There were almost no paintings in the infirmary because she did not want them to bother her patients. So she had to get outside when she wanted to use Hogwarts communication system. Of course, there were two or three empty frameworks inside the infirmary, in case she needed to be contacted, but the paintings were not allowed to come unless it was an emergency.

She made her way to her two favorite messengers. A carved wooden framework was encompassing a knight in full suit of armor mounted on a black horse and facing a serpentine, wingless, two-headed dragon. They were currently parrying, reenacting the four centuries old battle that had granted them to be represented here.

"Sir Mac Kelley? Ahrun?"

At the sound of her voice, the two stopped their sparring and turned toward her.

"Yes, milady?" asked the knight. "How may I be of service?"

"Could you go to the Gryffindor tower and ask Mister Potter to descend to the infirmary. It is quite urgent.

"Of course, milady. I shall fly like the wind."

On these words, the knight pressed his black steed and galloped out of its frame, disappearing to the eye, only to reappear in another painting, down the corridor.

Madam Pomfrey turned back to the dragon who was looking at her with four curious eyes.

"Ahrun, would you do me the favor of going to professor Dumbledore and informing him that the young lady under my care is now awake?"

The headmaster had asked to be immediately warned when the girl would stir and Madam Pomfrey was not about to disappoint him. The two heads nodded in silence and the dragon slithered off the ground and into the painted sky.

Now that this was taken care of, she walked back inside the infirmary to check on Miss Higurashi.

The young girl had obeyed her command and was waiting patiently under the white blankets. Madam Pomfrey smiled. If only her other patients could be a bit more like that… Especially those damn Gryffindor.

Miss Higurashi turned to her, her eyes darting around the nurse in an obvious search for Mister Potter.

"I sent messengers to get him," she reassured and the girl seemed to calm down a bit. "He should get here in a few minutes."

She was proven right when, a few minutes later, a disheveled, completely out of breath Harry Potter appeared at the doors of the hospital wing. Apparently, sir Mac Kelley had interpreted the wording " _quite urgent_ " as " _matter-of-life-or-death-emergency_ " and had pushed Mister Potter to run to the limits of his endurance to the infirmary.

The nurse sighed. She was going to need to have a word with the knight.

"Come in Mister Potter," she invited, "but do take the time to catch your breath; we don't want you to pass down from a heart attack."

She waved her wand at a bottle on one of the shelves and it floated to a glass where it poured its content. The glass then floated to the boy who was probably about to faint from the mad run across the corridors of Hogwarts. She asked him to drink, which he did, and seemed a lot better afterwards.

"Good," she stated as it settled to question. "Now, Mister Potter, I would like you to meet Miss Higurashi. She believes she can help you with a problem of … _possession_."

The word felt strange to her mouth but she ignored it.

"Oh, um. I guess it's a good thing, then," he replied and turned to the girl. "Miss Higurashi, right? I'm Harry Potter, nice to meet you."

The girl sent him a dumbfounded look and Madam Pomfrey realized that Mister Potter was not under the effect of the _Polylinguis_ spell.

Now, how was she going to take care of that? If she hexed Mister Potter with it, she would learn his language and not the other way around. And she could decidedly not ask Miss Higurashi to hex Mister Potter. The poor girl did not even seem to possess a wand. And to add to the mill, it was not like she could teach the spell to Mister Potter. The _Polylinguis_ was an advanced spell and quite complex in its application. She herself had needed a few days to master it and she had been a seventh year witch at the time.

Before she could ponder over it too much, the double doors of the infirmary opened themselves and Hogwarts' headmaster made its entrance.

As usual, he was dressed extravagantly – even for a wizard – his purples robes flowing behind him as he walked, his pointy purple hat cocked to the side, as if he had not taken the time to adjust it. Which was probably the case.

"Ah Madam Pomfrey," said professor Dumbledore with his usual amiable tone, "I believe you have once again done marvels with your young patient."

He turned to the boy.

"Hello Harry, I hope your marathon training is going well, yes?"

Harry Potter sent him an astounded look, but before he could answer anything, Madam Pomfrey decided to solve the matter at hand:

"Professor Dumbledore, you arrive with a perfect timing. It appears that Miss Higurashi here does not speak English well enough to converse fluently. There is only so much that the _Polylinguis_ spell can do."

Dumbledore looked at the girl who looked back at him.

Kagome's attention had been on him the instant he had entered. Her eyes had snapped to the nurse when her name had been spoken, but she had quickly focused back on the old wizard. She had not been able to really assess him, back then, but now that she could, she was almost wishing she didn't have her miko-senses.

The old man was _radiating_ power. He appeared nice and wise, but she had learnt not to judge people on their appearance. And what her senses were telling her was that the man was dangerous. Not _Sesshomaru-dangerous_ , mind you, but damn close. Her instincts were screaming to not let him out of her sight. Well, to be exact, her instincts were screaming and running around in circle, because she had no arrows and her bow wasn't even in her hands anymore.

Apparently oblivious to her internal wariness, the old wizard came to sit to the side of her bed and patted her hand. She paled, but forced her hand to stay in place.

The do-not-piss-off-the-all-powerful-wizard rule applied to everyone.

" _Miss_ _Higurashi, is that correct?_ " he asked in English and she silently cursed.

 _Great. I'm gonna trip over my words while addressing the power-equivalent of Sesshomaru. I love my life._

She faked a smile and nodded. Good thing she could at least understand most of what they were saying.

The old wizard put a hand in his sleeve and extracted a long stick out of it. Kagome paled but manage not to move.

 _He's not gonna kill me without a reason. He's not gonna kill me without a reason. He's not gonna kill me without a reason…_ she chanted to herself while preparing to throw a multi-layered barrier. Just in case.

But the old wizard merely pointed the wand at the ceiling and made a few circles with it.

"There, there," he then said merrily. "Nothing like a good old-fashioned translation spell, don't you think so, Harry?"

"Ah, yes, professor."

"And I believe professor Flitwick had recently mentioned researching a linguistic spell equivalent to the _Polylinguis_ , but of widened use, isn't that correct, Madam Pomfrey?"

"Well, I don't know professor. I cannot possibly remember all the spells that professor Flitwick announces he will investigate."

"It matters not, we'll have that problem solved in no time."

The old wizard's head nodded with contentment a few times before he turned back to Kagome, suddenly a lot more serious.

"Miss Higurashi…"

He looked at her and she quickly provided her full name:

"Kagome, sir. Higurashi Kagome."

He smiled at her, as if amused.

"Well, Miss Higurashi, I am Albus Dumbledore and I am very pleased to meet you."

"Likewise, sir" she replied carefully.

His expression was now unreadable.

"Miss Higurashi, I can see that you are afraid and I would like to tell you that you are perfectly safe at Hogwarts."

She had no idea if she could trust the old wizard – Dumbledore. His name was Dumbledore – but the sentence did make her relax a bit.

"Hogwarts?" she asked.

"Yes, Hogwarts."

He made a large gesture, apparently pointing at the whole castle

"School of witchcraft and wizardry, safest place in all of Britain. Or so they say…"

He winked at her.

Madam Pomfrey sniffed a bit, as if strangling a laugh and Kagome wondered at the said safety of the school, if its hospital wing was apparently so frequented. She did not have the time to ponder more, however, because the old wizard – Dumbledore – resumed his speech:

"You are quite the mysterious figure, you know? Appearing out of the Gate of the Departments of Mysteries, that's a feat that didn't pass unnoticed. Ah, there are so many things I would like to ask you. But I am also most certain that you have a few questions yourself, and it is only polite that we answer them before you answer ours, don't you think?"

He looked at her and even if his tone and posture were casual, she could see the seriousness in his piercing blue eyes. She could tell that he was assessing her at least as carefully as she was assessing him.

"Yes," she began, "I have many questions. But first, I would like to address a more important problem."

She turned to the boy who had said his name was Harry Potter.

"You are possessed," she declared. "And that is more urgent than any question I could have."

"Possessed?" asked Dumbledore and she looked back at him.

The interrogation was in his voice but it had not reached his eyes. He knew exactly what she was talking about but somehow was not willing to acknowledge it. She decided not to point this out.

You do _not_ piss off the all-powerful wizard.

"Yes," she replied meekly, "possessed. There is a dark youki merged to his mind and soul. From what I can sense, he seems to have repelled it for now, but it's still there, growing within him and it won't be kept at bay forever. A moment of weakness would be enough for the darkness to take over his mind again."

She saw the boy shiver at her words and he put his hand to a lightning shaped scar on his forehead. That was probably related and she filed the information for later.

"But the good news," she said with a forced cheerful voice, "is that I can purify the youki and rid him of it."

She had eyed Dumbledore with extreme attention and she distinctly noticed the surprise in his look before he hid it under a mask of relief. She turned to the boy who was sending her a hopeful look.

"Will you let me help you?" she asked, more for politeness than actual questioning.

She was going to purify him no matter his opinion on the matter.

"Yes!" he exclaimed. "Yes, of course!"

The enthusiasm made her smile. She could tell he knew there had been something wrong with his mind. He had probably been thinking about it, over and over, and she felt a tang of pity in her chest when she remembered his cries of pain.

She still had to apologize, she remembered. She decided to do it after purifying him.

"Well, come here, then."

She patted the mattress at her right side – since Dumbledore was still sitting next to her left thigh – and Harry scurried to her side.

"Now, give me your hand."

He handed it to her seemingly without any hesitation. She closed her eyes and focused on his aura, searching for the nest of darkness.

"What I'm going to do," she explained, "is enter a mental projection of your mind, find the youki that's decided to nest here and force it to leave. If it refuses to go peacefully, I'll destroy it."

She felt him nod in silence, with a bit of apprehension.

"It's important that you try to relax," she kept going. "It's not going to hurt you, except if it fights back, in which case, I'll create a barrier to protect you, so you'll just feel a short ping in your head. You're still good?"

"Y-yeah… um, what are you… sorry."

"No, it's fine. I'm still searching for it, so we can talk, no big deal. But when I start, it's gonna require a lot of concentration so I want you to stay silent, okay? I might talk to you, but don't answer, you'd break my focus, and you don't want a grumpy me trying that a second time.

He hastily promised not to say a word and she made the effort of smiling reassuringly:

"It'll be fine, don't worry. I'll zap this little rot in a second; you won't even see it coming! Well if I can find it, that is…"

She frowned a bit. This was taking a lot more time than it was supposed to.

"It's really well hidden. Almost as if it's not there…"

She remained silent for a while, but after a few minutes, she opened her eyes.

 _I can't feel it. I can't feel it at all… I wonder why._

She looked at Harry, who looked back at her, uneasy. Then an idea struck her. She pointed a finger to his scar:

"Can I…?"

He looked surprised.

"My scar? … Yeah, I guess. Sure."

He tried to smile but he was clearly too nervous to make a really good job of it. She put her hand forward. Her finger grazed the skin and very quickly retreated. The flash of pain had been instant.

"Found you," she growled, angrily massaging her hurt finger "You want to play it rough, you bastard? Fine, we'll be two."

She summoned the reiki in her hand, pouring more and more on her palm until the skin was glowing brightly. Then she turned back to Harry who, to his credit, had managed to remain calm even though the girl in front of him had apparently switched to _battle mode_.

Pissed-off battle mode.

"It will hurt a bit," she warned him, "but I'll raise shields so it won't hurt long. Try not to jerk away, okay?"

He nodded, visibly not trusting his voice at the moment. But then again, she didn't need him to make a long speech.

She pinned her hand to his forehead and was satisfied to feel the painful seal dissolve against her sacred energy.

She closed her eyes and searched for the youki. Well, "search" was not a very appropriate word for it. It was right there, encased in a bubble of blackness, hidden and everywhere at the same time. She raised a shield around the dark sphere, protecting Harry from the future battle.

 _No. Not a battle,_ she corrected with a dark mental laugh. _An extermination._

She visualized herself entering the sphere. She had her bow and a full quiver of arrow… and a sword, too, why not? It was a battle of minds and the more confident she would feel, the stronger she would be.

"Hello," she murmured to the entity.

She knew Harry had heard her words but he remembered to stay silent. What he could hear, the dark entity could hear too, and it was to that thing that Kagome was talking.

The youki was wordless. The black mass swirling and slithering inside the bubble was not able to form thoughts. It was not exactly 'aware' but it projected feelings and Kagome could sense them. So when she walked toward the centre of the blackness, she felt how it was reacting to her arrival.

 _Curiosity._

She formed a shield around her. Then, for good measure, she added another one around the bubble. Now Harry's mind was protected enough.

The dark mass slithered toward her.

 _Pleasure. Hunger. Greed._

"Happy to see me?" she snorted, knowing full well that her words could be heard by everyone present, but uncaring of the fact for the moment.

The darkness extended a few tendrils in her direction but they quickly recoiled when they got in contact with her barriers.

 _Pain._

"To hard for you to chew? That's too bad."

The darkness tried again, sending a long blackened spike to pierce her. It was disintegrated by her barrier and she smiled confidently.

 _Pain. Hesitation._

She took a few steps again, until the entity had to shrink to the sides of the bubble to avoid contact with her shield.

"I command you to leave," she ordered in her most Sesshomaru-like voice.

 _Indignation. Refusal._

The darkness whirled in offense at her injunction, a dozen spikes readying themselves to strike her down. She flared her powers and her barrier brightened.

 _Hesitation._

It was a battle of mind and she knew that she was a lot freer with what she could do here. She called to her powers, willing the reiki into another form.

 _Apprehension._

Two ribbons of pink light advanced toward the darkness, searing it whenever they touched it.

 _Pain. Struggle._

"You will leave." Her voice was like ice. "Now."

 _Hissing. Resistance._

She willed the ribbons to become dragons of light, their fangs searing the darkness.

 _Pain. Struggle._

"Go back to the shadows," she snarled, pressing harder against the blackness.

 _Anger. Hatred._

The darkness fought back, pressing itself against her shields. Even though it was burned, it kept pressing, as if it were endless. For a fleeting instant, she was scared that she would be drowned and that instant was enough for the darkness to devour her dragons.

 _Gloat. Triumph._

She steeled herself back, drawing her bow. Her arrows pierced the black void, leaving paths of light in their wake.

 _Pain. Anger._

"Go back to where you came," she hissed.

 _Reluctance. Fear._

"I don't care if it destroys you," she retorted. "You don't deserve to exist."

 _Fury. Hatred. Violence._

She refused the darkness to scare her; she denied her fear the right to exist, just like she denied it to the blackness. She extended her barriers, searing the void.

 _Rage. Hatred. Pain._

She decided that it was time to draw her sword and, in her hand, it took the form of the Tessaiga. She had always wanted to wield it, only if for a bit, but Inuyasha would never let it out of his sight. The blade blossomed in her hands and a dark smile spread across her face.

"You are powerless."

 _Hatred. Fear._

She raised the sword, its blade glowing of an ominous pink light.

"Go back to the shadows," she whispered as she unleashed the wind scar.

The scorching wave rippled through the darkness, consuming everything it touched.

 _Fear._

"And never come back."

 _Despair._

XXXXXXXXX

 **You know what? Screw the delays! I had a burst of inspiration and chapter 9 came actually easily so, why wait to share it? And it's even an extremely long chapter (by my standards), lucky you!**

 **Now I would like to address a few things before you start panicking.**

 **You might have noticed that Kagome is not exactly in character with Rumiko Takahashi's depiction. She's a lot darker, colder and a bit more violent (if not downright sadistic towards that poor youki) The reason is the following:**

 **While I have no trouble with the bubbly, naive Kagome from the beginning of the manga, I believe that spending a good chunk of your life fighting _freaking demons_ is enough to change someone in depth. Furthermore, Kagome has by this point been killing stuff on a daily basis for something like a year and ten, or so, months.**

 **I do my best to depict the changes that have taken place in her psyche (with the summaries and calculating reflexes) and I will continue to depict her as a complete badass.**

 **Now I would like to remind everyone that, if you feel the need to compare the two heroines, you will realize by next chapter, that they have a very different way to treat their respective situations. Where Kagome (toughened by 2 years of constant battle) faces every challenge head on, Hermione is mush more subtle and, let's say it, a lot less badass.**

 **This difference is intended and, while I'm going to give a bit more of free room for Hermione to shine, she will never have the same badass Action Girl status as Kagome. Because what would be the point of having two carbon copies of each other? Where would be the fun?**

 **I intend Hermione to be a lot more subtle, afraid and clever when facing her own enemies. And knowing that she will also be working with a bunch of heavily trained fighters, it will sometimes look as if she is the weakling.**

 **Well... technically, she is.**

 **She is the squishy wizard who just left a somewhat secure life (apart from the yearly rush of bad news) to fall in a crapsack world at war against _freaking demons_. As I said, I will do my best to let her shine, but she will not turn into a fighter just because she is thrown into the Sengoku Jidai.**

 **And if that is a problem to you, then I am terribly sorry. But since I am not going to change my writing of Hermione and Kagome, I could recommend reading another fanfic, perhaps?**

 **But if it is not a problem, then you just enjoyed a rant for nothing! I hope you had fun with that.**

 **As usual, don't hesitate to leave a comment. It's so easy to make me happy, isn't it?**

 **Sincerely,**

 **Claywind**


	10. Witch and Speculations

**Disclaimer:** I am neither J. K. Rowling, nor Rumiko Takahashi and I do NOT own the Harry Potter universe or the Inuyasha universe. No matter how much I want to.

 **Rating:** M, for adult themes, mild swearing, violence and lemon

 **Warnings:** Inuyasha being rude.

XXXXXXXXX

The old woman in red and white was called Kaede and her occupation as the village's only priestess did not make religious duties her principal line of work. She was currently grinding herbs and roots in an antique-looking mortar with the intent – she had explained when questioned – to brew a cataplasm for wounds.

Apparently, priestess equaled doctor. Hermione could live with that.

The man in ample purplish-blue robes was a monk going by the name of Miroku. He apparently had spiritual powers and his right hand was cursed. Or so it had been explained after he had asked her if she would do him the honor of bearing his children.

She had answered with a series of flabbergasted "nope-no-really-no" and had then wondered what the hell the social norms around here were. But, since the woman with the two-tailed cat had thumped a bony-looking _freaking huge_ boomerang-shaped thing on his head right after the monk had made his offer, she had concluded that the social norms were not the ones in question here.

Speaking of her, the woman in pink and green kimono – it had been confirmed as such – was a demon slayer named Sango. Her job was to slay demons, and to do that, she used her bone-boomerang, Hiraikotsu. Yes, that thing that was roughly her size – and probably three times her weight – was a weapon. A long range weapon. No she didn't have any trouble carrying and throwing it around, why?

Also, demons existed.

They were called youkai and the two-tailed cat – Kirara – on her shoulder was one. Not very impressive, right? Yeah, it could turn into a car-sized version of itself. With fire.

Hermione had been informed that there was another youkai in the village, a kitsune, who she had not yet had the pleasure to meet. Shippo – why on earth would someone be called _tail_ escaped her – was currently out playing with the other children in the village and would come back in the evening.

A cat demon and a fox demon. It seemed youkai were some sorts of nature spirits, like magical creatures, but derived of normal animals.

Hermione was currently staring at Inuyasha.

 _Hanyou._

The word kept swirling in her mind, like a small tornado, its implied meaning distorting her conceptions of what was decent.

 _Hanyou._

Her eyes fell back to the two tailed cat before going back to the half dog demon.

A human had had sex with some sort of supernatural beast – a magical akita? – and Inuyasha was the result.

Sango had assured that Kirara was perfectly able to understand when they spoke, which supposed the two-tailed cat had an at least human level of intelligence, but Hermione couldn't help but wonder… When were the boundaries between animals, monsters and humans blurred enough to stop being, well… _problematic_ when crossed?

They were drinking tea in silence, its bitterness suiting her reflection and, after a long introspective moment on the respective rights and wrongs of interspecies sexuality and bestiality, she decided that Inuyasha was obviously intelligent, quite nice – if not very talkative – and could certainly not be held responsible for his parentage. She thus resolved to put the problem aside and not think about it until she had met his parents.

In which case, she decided, she would refrain from asking them embarrassing questions on the _hows_ of the matter, because merely thinking about it was already making her blush.

XXXXX

A small kid entered the hut and chirruped a joyful:

"I'm home!"

Hermione, who had been conversing quietly with Sango – and absolutely _not_ storming her under a never-ending flow of questions about her job, her world, her cat… and basically everything she could think of about the current historical events – raised her head to look at the owner of the voice.

It was a very young-looking child, with bright red-orange hair and the most incredible eyes she had ever seen. His irises were of a deep, intense turquoise but it was his pupils that dazzled her: two white oblong discs horizontally divided by a small dark gap. She wondered, as she gazed in shock, if biologists had ever dissected an eye like that, because she had never read of anything similar.

The kid stared back in return, surprised, and pointed a finger at her, while calling to the person who was the closest to him, namely Miroku.

"Who's that?" he asked.

He turned his head to consult the monk and his gesture made Hermione notice the pointy shape of his ears and she wondered if he was some kind of abnormally pretty House Elf. If that was the case, they were far better treated in this place than they had ever been in Magical Britain.

Before Miroku could answer the inquiry, Hermione had gotten up and walked to the kid. She crouched in front of him, never looking away from his eyes, and he flinched under her carefully scrutiny.

She waved a hand from his right to his left, observing how his eyes were following her fingers, while darting back to her face.

"You can see me," she eventually stated and let her hand fall back to her side.

"Um… yes," he responded nervously. "Is that a bad thing?"

She smiled reassuringly.

"No, not at all. I just don't understand how your eyes work."

The kid squinted, trying to look at his own eyes, which did not work very well. When he abandoned, his attention came back to her and he raised an intrigued eyebrow:

"What do you mean, how they work? They're my eyes, I see with them. There's nothing to understand."

Hermione took a deep breath and went to professor mode:

"Most – if not every – living creatures have black pupils because the pupil is actually a hole in the eye. Like a window. It seems to get bigger or smaller depending on the intensity of the light surrounding, but it's only because the iris retracts or expands around it. So the blackness is actually just shade, because it's dark inside of the eye. But yours are white and I don't understand how that makes sense, biologically-speaking…"

The kid had listened to her explanation with intrigued interest (albeit more because he was wondering who was that strangely garbed girl). When she trailed off, as if lost in her own thoughts, he simply suggested:

"Maybe the insides of my eyes are just white and that's all there is to it?"

"If that were the case…" she paused, considering it for a minute but ended up dismissing the possibility: "No," she resumed, "it wouldn't make sense for your eyes to have evolved like that. You say you don't have trouble seeing?"

"Nope. I see better than Sango and Miroku, and, in the dark, I can spot things that Inuyasha can't."

The mentioned hanyou let out a dismissive "keh", apparently not convinced.

"It doesn't work that way," she muttered to herself, "it's not supposed to work that way; it isn't the way humans have evolved…"

The kid's face brightened and he interrupted her downward-spiraling thinking process:

"Oh, I get it, now. Don't worry, it's normal. I'm a youkai so I don't work like humans do."

The witch froze, looking at the child, this time noticing the bushy tail protruding from his back and the _paws_ coming out of his pants. How could she have not seen them?

 _Youkai can look human?_

Oblivious to the dumbfounded look on her face, the kid went to sit next to Kaede, who was boiling a pot of something that smelt really good.

"So, who're you?" he asked after sitting down near the fire. "And where's Kagome?"

A distinct arc of tension ran through the air when he spoke those words. Inuyasha briskly rose and left the hut without a word. The kid looked around at the closed faces, with an uneasy expression. After a few minutes of uncomfortable silence, Miroku spoke:

"That, my young Shippo, is lady Hermione."

She raised an eyebrow at the honorific but did not comment on it. It would have to wait. She turned to the child and smiled gently.

 _So that's the other one. A kitsune, from what they said. Shippo, huh?_

Her eyes fell on his bushy tail.

 _I guess I get the name, now…_

Her eyes trailed in the direction of the door through which Inuyasha had left. She was more intrigued than ever about his mixed parentage. She realized, in fact, that had he been here, she could not have stopped herself from burying him under a thousand questions. But somehow she knew that her questions would not be met with a positive reception, so she was mildly relieved that he was not there to tempt her curiosity.

She could always ask him later about his parents and family, but for now, there was a most definitive topic that needed her attention. She put down her empty cup and sat straight, searching Sango and Miroku's faces with resolve.

"Perhaps it is time we go to the heart of the matter."

Her declaration, stated in an even voice, made the four persons in the hut look at her.

"What exactly do you mean, lady Hermione?" asked Miroku in a conversational tone.

She pointed around her, gesturing not at the hut, but at the whole world:

"What am I doing here? Who is that Kagome that Shippo seems to have been expecting? Where is she from? Does she usually travel through that strange square well?"

Sango interrupted her questions, eyebrows knitted:

"How do you know Kagome travels through the well?"

Hermione stared at the slayer, slight disbelief in her expression.

It was so obvious.

"I woke up in that well," she explained, "and Inuyasha seemed to be expecting someone of that name inside of it."

Hermione had an extremely good memory. Almost eidetic, in fact. Now that she could understand Japanese, the scene of her arrival was much clearer to her mind and she was able to put two and two together.

"And Shippo mentioned her just before, which leads me to believe that she comes around here often. Hence the possible regular use of the well. Also, there was a girl in a similarly shaped gap when I fell into it. I guess it was her, so the parallel is easy to draw…"

She trailed off, recalling her time in white King's Cross, and tried to match her memory of the shining square hole in the white platform with her memory of the well in which she had awoken.

Inuyasha burst inside, startling everyone:

"Whaddya mean, she was in?" he barked roughly. "You saw her? Is she okay?"

Hermione stared at his frantic expression and blinked:

"She seemed fine," she reassured him. "She didn't have any wounds that I could see. She looked like she was asleep and floating.

Inuyasha's eyes narrowed and he sent her an inquisitive look:

"What were you doing in the shrine?"

"A shrine?" She lifted her eyebrows. "What shrine? What would I be doing in a shrine?"

"You've come through the well," he stubbornly asserted, "I saw you in the well."

"Yes, I was in the well," she replied, beginning to feel a little annoyed. "What of it?"

"See? You jumped through the well," he continued stubbornly. "It means you were in the shrine!"

"I don't remember being near a shrine, I-…"

"Don't lie!" he barked.

"I am not a liar!" she retorted, struggling to stay calm. "And I don't see why arriving in a well links me to a shrine."

"Because it's Kagome's house!" Inuyasha bawled as if it was the key to everything.

"But _why_ would _I_ be in a shrine?" she yelled back, too exasperated to be polite.

Miroku raised a calming hand, deciding he should intervene before Inuyasha's poor communications skills got them in trouble again.

"If I may clarify the matter?" he asked with an incredible calm.

Hermione quickly accepted, interiorly sighing in relief. Inuyasha settled himself back in his former sitting position against the wall, with an annoyed "keh". Miroku slightly shook his head in frustration, before turning to Hermione:

"Lady Kagome dwells within a shrine that is magically connected to this place. The connection is made through the bone-eater well, in which Inuyasha said he found you. We did not believe there was another entry way in this passage, but since you obviously do not know about the shrine, it is safe to assume you did not come through it."

The monk had said the last words while intently looking at Inuyasha and the hanyou "keh-ed" grumpily. Turning back to Hermione, Miroku resumed his speech:

"Which leaves us with the matter of determining where you're from. Would you tell us?"

"Um…Yes, of course. I can tell you where I'm from."

Or _when_ , as she had started to suspect. If she was in the same universe, then there was a strong doubt that she was not in the same period of time.

That's why Inuyasha's question took her absolutely by surprise:

"What's a bike?"

She stared back, dumbfounded.

"I beg your pardon?"

He folded his hands in his sleeves with an air of smugness.

"A bike," he repeated. "I'm asking you what it is… Do you know?"

 _ʻDo you knowʼ_ was not a question one should ever ask Hermione.

She straightened herself, looked defiantly at the poor hanyou who had no idea what he had just unleashed:

"A bike, or bicycle, is a single track vehicle that is powered through pedaling. It consists of two wheels, one behind the other, attached to a metallic frame and steered by a rod, called a handlebar, which is perpendicular to the axis of the wheels and parallel to the ground. Bikes were introduced in Europe around the nineteenth century by the Baron Karl von Drais and were the first human means of transport to use only two wheels in tandem. They were also…"

She kept going, retracing the etymology of the word, its history, reciting the numerous types of bikes and their widely diverse uses and technical aspects until she discerned the incredible quality of the silence around her. She went quiet.

They were all looking at her like she was completely and utterly crazy. Even the monk seemed a bit dazed. She sniffed and looked at her hands, folded nicely into her lap.

"Yes," she muttered, "I know what a bike is."

Inuyasha got out of his shock and "keh-ed" softly.

"Yeah, you do," he grumbled. "And if you do, then you're from the future too."

Hermione's features brightened:

"I knew it!" she exclaimed. "This is not another realm of reality! I'm in the past!"

She took a short pause, pondering over the information.

"So… mind telling me what's going on? How I got here?"

Sango shook her head:

"We have no idea. Until today, Kagome had been the only one to come here through the well…"

Inuyasha mumbled something and Sango gave him an emphatic look.

"…Even though, for some reason, Inuyasha can use it as well to go to the future."

Her tone indicated that she had no idea what that reason could be and was still second-guessing the ones who would have made that decision.

At this point, Hermione decided that she was going to know more. A lot more.

"Okay," she declared with determination, "I want the whole story. Why is she travelling to the past in the first place? What. Is. Going. On."

There was a long silence.

"That's… a long story," sighed Miroku.

Hermione opened her mokeskin pouch and grabbed a pen and a few sheets of parchment.

"We've got time," she affirmed with a smile. "Besides, I like long stories."

XXXXX

Hermione looked at her notes, her eyes not really processing what they were seeing.

"So…" she began in a wavering voice

Sango passed her a steaming bowl from Kaede and she took it absentmindedly. The heat of the meal was warming her palms.

"So…" she tried again as other bowls were distributed between them.

The warmth against her hands was becoming a little uncomfortable and she put the bowl down to alleviate it.

"So?" asked Sango with an interested look.

"There's an evil shape-shifting youkai called Naraku, who has wronged all of you in different ways… and you have allied to destroy him."

The group in front of her exchanged a few glances.

"That's the idea," gruffly said Inuyasha with his mouth half-full. "That bastard hates our guts and he's always plotting some fucking scheme."

Hermione nodded and continued:

"And Kagome is the reincarnation of a priestess named Kikyo…"

She feigned not to notice the way Inuyasha had tensed at the words. That part of the explanation had made him leave the hut in the middle of it. She could understand, though.

Being retold how a shape-shifting monster had pitted you and the one you loved against each other would not be something she could have taken calmly. Especially considering they had both died (or in Inuyasha's case, been pinned to a tree by an arrow forever) hating the other.

"And Kagome had a magical pearl, called the Shikon Jewel, under her care," she continued. "But it was shattered and now you're in a race to gather the shards before Naraku does. And it's important because the full Shikon grants insane powers to those who have it and Naraku is already very powerful, as well as evil and bent on world domination."

"And he's crazy, too," mentioned Shippo.

Hermione sighed. Being evil, insane and powerful was kind of a bad combination.

"Also there's the wish," added Miroku. "The full Shikon Jewel can grant a wish."

Hermione raised her head. That part had been glanced over in the story.

"But the wish is never granted the way you expect it to be," said Kaede gravely. "The Shikon is a foul and tainted thing. It only brings grief and despair to those who have it."

The old woman looked at a small window on the wall. The night had begun to fall.

"It should be destroyed," Kaede continued. "And we believed my sister had found a way when she asked me with her dying breath to burn it with her on her funeral pyre."

"But it didn't work," murmured Hermione.

Kaede looked at her, pain and grief burning in her old eyes:

"Not only did it not work, child, but it cursed yet another innocent soul."

The old woman sighed deeply and wrapped her arms around herself, as if suddenly very cold.

"Now I begin to believe that not even a selfless wish could destroy that ill-fated stone…" she whispered.

A long pause followed Kaede's words, and they all ate in silence for a while. Eventually, Miroku put his empty bowl down:

"And the worse of it is that lady Kagome was the only one among us who could sense the shards. Now that she's gone, we don't know where to look."

"Don't talk about her like she's dead!" growled Inuyasha. "She's fine. She's alive and she's fine."

Only because she was sitting very close to him, did Hermione hear the murmured words that followed:

"She must be…"

XXXXXXXXX

 **Urgh! That chapter was such a pain in the a** to write. So many English expressions that I didn't know how to use... I spent way to much time on English-French dictionaries.**

 **But here it is. Finally done and over with, so I hope you'll enjoy it even if not much happens. (Also don't worry, the next Hermione chapter should be more action-packed, but I needed to put a few recaps here.)**

 **Hermione's concerns with bestiality were fun to write, though. And Shippo's eyes have always bothered me. How the hell can this work? (to which my mind ususally answers: "youkai magic, duh.")**

 **I'll try to post chapter 11 (a Kagome in Hogwarts chapter) around next thursday, but I can't promise anything.**

 **On this note, don't hesitate to comment, it gets me psyched up to write.**

 **Sincerely,**

 **Claywind**


	11. Priestess' Decisions

Disclaimer: I am neither J. K. Rowling, nor Rumiko Takahashi and I do NOT own the Harry Potter universe or the Inuyasha universe. No matter how much I want to.

 **Rating:** M, for adult themes, mild swearing, violence and lemon

 **Warnings:** This is probably going to turn into a crack fic.

 **Thanks to everyone for their reviews and sorry for the late update (reality has its way to keep me away from my keyboard)**

 **Without further addue, here's chapter 11!**

XXXXXXXXXX

Kagome was currently marching along the hallways of Hogwarts. She had been given replacement clothes for her burned uniform but had yet to figure out how she was supposed to move around without tripping in the ample flowing black robes. She had attempted to limit her dressing to the dark grey pullover and knee-long skirt that seemed to be the under parts of Hogwarts' school uniform, but her effort had been promptly opposed by Madam Pomfrey who had asked her – politely but firmly – to put the robes on.

Modesty seemed to be more important than freedom of movement around here.

Mulling over her umpteenth destroyed uniform – probably the sixty-fourth, though she was not sure (she had lost track around the fiftieth) – Kagome followed the professor McGonagall along the tortuous hallways of Hogwarts.

After Harry had been sent back to his tower (did every student here have a personal tower? That place must be friggin' huge) and Dumbledore had left for his office (for which she was grateful, the old man unnerved her), Kagome had been left to the attendance of Hogwarts' experienced nurse until the arrival of professor McGonagall. The severe-looking woman had irrupted in the infirmary with a regal bearing mixed with an air of coldness akin to that of a taiyoukai, and had asked Kagome to come with her.

The translation charms was by this point long gone but Kagome was not that much of a failure in English that she couldn't understand a simple " _follow me_ ".

After countless flights of stairs, the elderly professor stopped in front of a cramped wooden door, apparently not phased in the slightest by having climbed the height equivalent of Mt Fuji. Struggling to regain her breath, Kagome sent her a bewildered look. How could an old lady outmatch her in terms of physical stamina? Said lady knocked dryly at the door and entered without waiting for an answer. Feeling shamefully out of shape Kagome followed in her trail.

" _Minerva_ ," a squeaky voice erupted from behind an impressive pile of parchments " _what can I do for you?_ "

Kagome looked around, dismissing the shelves lining the walls where very strange, random-looking objects were heaping up. The owner of the squeaky voice was a tiny built man with the most impressive brown moustache Kagome had ever seen.

" _Ah, Filius, we have a non-native speaker of English at Hogwarts…_ " she pointed at Kagome who smiled politely to the small man.

"… _and Albus mentioned that you might solve our problem._ "

The man clapped his hands, visibly delighted that his competences had been remembered and jumped down from his chair. He literally jumped down. The man was so small that his own desk was taller than him.

 _Does he need a ladder to sit on this chair?_

Kagome had to restrain a snort at the thought of the tiny man climbing his furniture like an alpinist. She refrained from asking, though, because she knew she would probably not stop herself from laughing if the subject was broached. And it would have been extremely rude to laugh at the height of the person who was without a doubt a respected teacher of magic.

A tiny part of her mind kept making comments, though.

 _He looks just like that toad Sesshomaru drags around… I wonder if Jaken could have had descendants… Probably not, considering how insufferable he can be. Then what kind of strange mix is that guy?_

Unaware of her inner (and offensive) debate, the small man scampered towards her and, smiling broadly, shook her hand with vigor.

" _Yes, yes. Miss Higurashi, I presume? I am professor Filius Flitwick, delighted to meet you! Don't you worry, dear, professor Dumbledore already warned me of your conundrum, and I have exactly what you need."_ He released her hand. _"You're from Japan, is that correct? Marvelous country, truly. I've travelled there once, to Kyoto, I mean. For study purpose, you see?"_ She blinked, already lost _"Also there was an international congress in which I demonstrated… ah, it doesn't matter much. But I took the time to visit a little and, of course, I was amazed. Such a beautiful place, full of incredible creatures…_ "

Taken aback by his enthusiastic stream of words, she let herself be lead to an enormous cushion. After making sure that she was comfortably installed, the tiny professor waved his wooden stick at the huge bookshelf standing behind his desk.

Books left their cushy place on the wood to begin floating in the room, encircling him in lazy currents of colorful covers.

" _It's been so much time since I've had to use this spell_ " he chattered amiably while scanning through the different titles and dismissing the unwanted ones with a flick of the wrist. " _I must admit to my deepest shame that I don't remember each and every spell I've researched. My memory isn't what it used to be, you know how it is…"_

He paused and glanced briefly at her. She decided to nod affirmatively and smiled for good measure.

 _"Well, you're young, so I guess you don't-… there it is!_ " he exclaimed, jumping oh-so-slightly.

His face radiating with glee, he brandished a thick book with a worn leather cover. Going back to his desk, he climbed on what looked like a small hidden stool and fell on his chair with a sigh of satisfaction. Then he dropped the heavy book on the desk and began flipping through the pages at an alarming speed. After a few minutes, when he was somewhere around the two thirds of the book, he stopped his research to what must have been the correct page. His eyes were scanning two sheets of parchments that were placed between the pages and Kagome was briefly able to discern a fine handwriting on them.

" _That dear Gilgamus_ " he mumbled while reading through his notes " _very clever man but not very astute. Never thought non-advanced wizards would need to speak foreign languages. Anyway, the motions are…_ "

Without really looking at her, he waved his wand in the direction of Kagome.

" _Multiglossón._ " he articulated with a jaded tone.

Even though his attitude seemed careless his hand accomplished a very complex and precise gesture, one that must have required countless hours of practice to perfect, and Kagome made a mental note to never underestimate the small man. Someone who invented so many spells that he could not remember them was not to be taken lightly.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a wave of knowledge searing through her mind.

"Aow!" she exclaimed with a pained grimace "What the…"

"Is she okay?" professor McGonagall asked as the girl was bringing her hands to her head.

"Yes, yes," replied professor Flitwick, floating the book back to its shelf "She will be fine. My _multiglossón_ is a lot more durable than the common _polylinguis_. It should last for approximately two weeks before needing renewal."

He puffed with pride at his statement and, jumping again from his chair, he tiptoed with a badly concealed enthusiasm to the tall witch.

"So, Minerva…" he asked his colleague with the tone of the conspiracy "Who is that young foreign lady? Is she a new student?"

His eyes lit up with excitement:

"Transferred perhaps? That is very so uncommonly rare! The last one was a third year from the Salem Witches' Institute in… 1981, if I remember correctly… Should we go fetch the Sorting Hat? I bet she is going to end up in my House. She sure looks like a Ravenclaw to me."

Kagome, who had recovered from the _multiglossón_ in the meantime, stared at them with wide eyes.

"Ahem…" she coughed, failing to hide her confusion and deciding she'd rather ask "Is it normal that I understand your words but not what you're saying?"

The two adults looked a bit sheepish.

"Don't worry," said McGonagall "It is not particularly relevant to your case, Miss Higurashi."

At her words, professor Flitwick's eyes lit up with interest but before he could speak, the Scottish witch had turned to him:

"We will discuss this later, Filius. For now I believe it's time we part from you. Albus requested Miss Higurashi in his office as soon as that matter was settled, which it is."

A brief look of disappointment crossed the tiny professor's face but he replied nothing and instead turned back to his desk. Arrived at the chair, he looked back, as if suddenly remembering them and offered them a polite – if a bit stiff – goodbye.

XXXXX

Harry was pacing back and forth in Dumbledore's office. His thoughts were a jumbled mess and even Fawkes's soothing trills could not calm him at this point.

Dumbledore had just explained him what had happened at the Department of Mysteries and the information was a bit too much to take in.

 _I had Voldemort in my brain._

Once again, he repressed a violent nausea at the thought. He felt sick.

 _I had Voldemort in my brain the whole year… the… my whole life!_

Knowing it was enough to put the young wizard was on edge but the fact that Dumbledore had known was even worse. Harry stopped his frantic pacing to shot a murderous glare at the elderly headmaster who replied with a serene look completed with an attentive but unworried expression on his face. Harry resumed his pacing.

 _He knew. He knew and he didn't… he never even once thought about telling me!_

The young wizard clenched his fists, struggling to control the growing anger. He felt betrayed. Hurt. He had trusted Dumbledore, more than anyone, he had been convinced the headmaster would never let him down, no matter what. He would have defended the old man to his last breath, be it from the Ministry or Death Eaters, Harry would have fought. He had taught the other students and rebelled against Umbridge, all in his name. ʻDumbledore's Armyʼ, he had called it. They had rebelled for him. _He_ had fought for him, partly to repay all the things Dumbledore had given him, partly to prove his worth to the old wizard.

He trusted Dumbledore, but apparently Dumbledore did not trust him back. Why the old wizard would not put his faith in him, Harry did not know. He only knew that it hurt not be acknowledged. By staying silent Dumbledore had basically admitted that he thought Harry was not good enough.

His palms hurt and he had to slowly unclench his nails from his fists. He did not know if he would have felt the same betrayal, if Ron had suddenly told him that he had been working with Umbridge all along, or if Hermione…

 _Hermione._

The reminder hit him like a ton of bricks and he stopped dead in his tracks.

They had told him that she had gone ʻthrough the Veilʼ. A fancy way to explain nothing but that he would never see her again. He noticed a painful lump in his throat and tried to swallow but it would just not go away.

 _ʻGone through the Veilʼ_ they had said. But why they had not done anything to stop her, no one told him. He tried to ignore the moist gathering in his eyes and he glared at the floor where his feet had brought him. The bottom of Fawkes's perch was blurred and Harry refused to wipe the tears running down his eyes. Crooning softly, the phoenix jumped to his shoulder and pressed his warm feathers against his cheek. Harry fought back the need to hug back the bird. He didn't want Dumbledore to see him like this. He didn't want to show the elderly wizard how vulnerable he was.

Hermione and Sirius were dead.

His shoulders shook but he restrained the sob that had tried to force its way out of his chest. Dumbledore had known of the link he shared with Voldemort. He had known for at least a year – and possibly suspected it since his birth. And the headmaster had decided that Harry was neither strong enough, nor skilled enough to handle it. Even though he would have done anything, even though his loyalty was irreproachable, he was not judged worthy enough.

And this was the most painful betrayal of all.

Harry's tears had dried down and his anger rose again.

Dumbledore had known that Voldemort could possess him; he had known and he had still done _nothing_ to prevent him from hurting his friends.

Fawkes emitted a soft trill and Harry closed his eyes, his head lowered.

Hermione and Sirius were dead.

He fought back with resolved determination each and every one of the new tears that were beginning to prickle out of his eyes.

If only he had known, he thought, he would never have rushed madly to the Ministry to save his godfather. He would have been careful, he would have taken precautions… He would never have lead all of them into danger, he would never had let them fall into such an obvious trap. He would have suspected something was amiss. He _would_ have.

Because the possibility that he would not have, the possibility that he would have gambled their lives anyway, was an idea he could not bear.

It would mean that their deaths were his fault, and how could he handle that?

So Harry was putting the blame on Dumbledore, who seemed perfectly fine with that. The headmaster had not said a word to defend his actions. It was a proof that he thought he was at fault, right? Harry glared at the headmaster again. The old wizard's serenity made him want to scream.

 _How can he look so… so relaxed when people are dead because of his secrets?!_

Harry opened his mouth, ready to curse and yell – Dumbledore had not interrupted him the three first times and it was extremely cathartic – but a knock on the door stopped him in his tracks.

Three pairs of eyes (not counting the paintings) turned to the entrance of the office.

"A moment, Minerva."

Dumbledore had spoken softly, but Harry knew that the headmaster's voice had reached the other side of the door. Hogwarts just worked like that.

The old wizard turned a concerned face to him:

"This is professor McGonagall with the young witch who appeared from the Veil yesternight. We're going to have a private discussion about the how's and why of her arrival in the Department of Mysteries. Normally, I would have asked you to go back to your dorm, but I believe you deserve to be part of this conversation. That is, if you are feeling better…"

Dumbledore raised an inquisitive eyebrow, looking at him intently and Harry took a few seconds to blink before he nodded in silence. Dumbledore smiled lightly and turned to face the office's door.

"Please come in."

Professor McGonagall entered, surveying the room with cold grey eyes and nodding at Harry when they fell on him. Behind her, entered a slightly panting dark-haired girl and Harry recognized the Asian girl that had ʻdepossessedʼ him.

 _That's not the right word…_

He pondered a few seconds before finding it.

 _Exorcised. Right. She's an exorcist._

He observed her. Hogwarts' student robes were hiding most of her frame so any examination on that part was hard, but she seemed a bit frail. For the rest, she had long glossy black hair, an oval face, dark brown eyes – almost black, in fact, but it could be the lighting – and mostly fair skin (except under the eyes where an apparently prolonged lack of sleep had taken its toll).

Harry decided that she was quite pretty. But then, she reminded him a bit of Cho Chang, so it was hard to be impartial.

Casting these considerations aside, he waved to her and she smiled back, her attention focused on his shoulder. Harry raised an eyebrow and suddenly remembered that Fawkes was perched here. He raised a hand to pet the phoenix, who crooned a bit and flew back to his perch.

"Ah, Minerva" Dumbledore said with a pleased smile "Quite good of you to have come so fast. And miss Higurashi, too… good. I surmise that your linguistic problems are settled?"

The girl nodded silently, seeming tense and Harry wondered why. Had she some unexplained fear of old people?

Dumbledore clapped his hands joyfully:

"Very good, then. We shall proceed with explanations." He turned to the girl "Do you have any specific question in mind?"

The headmaster leant over his desk, giving her the best inquisitive look Harry had seen so far.

"Um. Yes. Where am I?" Her answers were crisp and her voice as tense as her shoulders. Looking at her feet, Harry realized that she had assumed some sort of battle or guard position and seemed ready to dodge anything.

Apparently entirely oblivious to the fact he was terrorizing the girl, Dumbledore answered with a wizened old smile:

"As I mentioned a few hours ago, you are in Hogwarts, school of witchcraft and wizardry."

Her stance did seem to relax, if only slightly.

"Yes, I remember." Her voice was edgy, underlined with a slight touch of annoyance "But where _on Earth_ am I? What continent? What country? What town?"

If Dumbledore looked absolutely unruffled, professor McGonagall did make a stunned face. Well, as stunned as the Gryffindor's Head of House could be, considering she had to deal with Fred and George on a daily basis.

"You're in Scotland, of course" she answered, her Scottish accent rising to the occasion "but the exact location of Hogwarts is maintained obscure to prevent it slipping to the muggles."

The girl cocked her head to the side.

"The muggles?"

McGonagall nodded shortly.

"People with no magic powers. Non-wizards, if you will. We keep the wizarding world secret to them."

The girl frowned a bit.

"Wizards and… muggles. I'm a Shinto priestess, trained in the way of the miko. What does that make me in your terminology?"

"Well" began McGonagall with a bit of an embarrassed look "We are not completely sure yet… You are unlearned about magic… and you don't carry a wand-…"

"Two things that can be easily remedied" interrupted Dumbledore and McGonagall shot him a dark look, reminding Harry that she did not like being cut short.

"Yes, Albus," she replied crisply" I am aware. But still, the facts mean that which would indicate that miss Higurashi was raised in a muggle environment. She is obviously over eleven and has not received a letter or whatever forms of communication the Japanese witchcraft schools employ. This marks her as a non-wizard in her country, whatever her other powers are."

"There are magic schools in Japan?" the girl asked with an astonished expression.

Harry was surprised too, even though he should have expected that Britain would not be the only magical country in the world. He had even met students from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang, both from foreign schools. He had just expected, somehow, that the wizarding world would stop at Europa.

For some reason, Japan struck him most like a place where there could be a lot of weird magical stuff going on – but not, you know, _actual_ magic – Something along the lines of teenage girls in mini-skirts shooting pink laser-beams at terribly ugly villains, sword-fighting street samurais with a cold attitude and giant super-advanced robots fighting huge evil abominations. He was unconsciously expecting that stuff in Japan, the same way he expected any upcoming alien invasion to target mainly (if not _only_ ) the USA.

Harry was starting to think that the Medias might have slightly corrupted his general vision of the world…

Professor McGonagall's short answer brought him back to the current situation:

"Well, of course, there are. I think there is at least four or five magical schools in Japan. The most notorious is known as Yozora Kikan and features among the eleven top international schools of magic worldwide. Of course, Hogwarts is among them too."

" _Yozora_ , what an oddly poetic name…" the girl muttered before speaking louder "So, from what I get, there's a hidden magical world pretty much all around the world, correct?"

"Correct."

"And… there was a war?"

In a few sentences, professor McGonagall retraced the main events of the First Wizarding War, its roots in the blood purists' beliefs and how Voldemort's death had caused his followers to flee, leaving the country in a state of dire waste. Harry realized that he was actually impressed by her knowledge of Magical History, a subject that professor Binns had a tendency to make extremely hard to follow due to falling asleep to his monotone.

As for the girl, she seemed to be taking it pretty well. Harry wasn't sure if he would have handled the info of a resurrected evil overlord of darkness coming back to start a second war with such a cool attitude.

"So, this Voldemort guy has been dead… or in a close-to-death kind of coma state for a decade and has been trying to come back to life for four years… and last summer he managed to come back," she turned to Harry who gave an assertive nod "and now, his first real appearance in public is to try and get some kind of crystal orb…"

McGonagall jumped a bit:

"How do you know about that?" her voice was dry and cautious, and Harry noticed that she had her wand loosely pointed in the direction of the girl. Apparently, she had noticed too, because her stance shifted almost unnoticeably to face the Scottish witch while her hand casually pointed at Harry:

"I saw a few flashes of the night in his mind when I got him rid of the youki. And…" she turned towards Dumbledore who had remained silent until now "Could you stop, please? You saved my life and I'm indebted to you. I'm not your enemy and I don't like being threatened."

She had pronounced the word with a calm jaded tone; as if it was the kind of situations she was used to get into, or at least used to deal with.

"I can assure you that I have no intent to threaten you in the slightest," replied Dumbledore with his most gentle voice, but to Harry's ears it felt somehow forced "What would make you believe that?"

She assessed him carefully.

"You've been flaring your power since the moment I came in," she eventually replied "That's either a challenge, either a threat. And I don't want to fight you."

Her voice wavered for a second but she promptly regained control of it – almost instantaneously – and Harry thought he had imagined the fleeting frailness because, when she raised her head, there was a cold fire dancing in her eyes.

"I don't want to fight you, because fighting would be pointless. You're not my enemy. You're not who I want to fight."

She straightened, appearing suddenly a lot more dangerous that Harry had first perceived her to be.

"I'm after the one you call Voldemort. From what I get, there's a war going on and you're on the side that opposes him. I owe you my life, but even without that, I'd have become your ally because I want to destroy him."

She shook her head and corrected:

"I want to _erase_ his presence from the world, and I will fight for that, whatever the cost."

Fawkes screeched miserably on his perch and Harry somehow got the conviction that it was because of the searing hatred behind the girl's words. Phoenixes were rumored to sense emotions, but he had never seen Fawkes react like that. The girl's posture relaxed to the bird's cry and she smiled to the phoenix, her dark mood abruptly and inexplicably dispelled.

Dumbledore spoke, and her smile vanished:

"I don't think I can let an underage witch risk her life in a war," he said slowly "The Ministry is already going to be hard to appease about my recent interference against Voldemort. And it is going to be even harder to have them agree to my request that you should be placed under the protection of Hogwarts for now. I asked the Aurors who intervened last night to minimize your involvement in their reports. Most of them agreed, out of respect for me or compassion for you, but if you make yourself known, the Ministry is sure to take an interest in you."

His tone indicated that this event would not be pleasing and Harry shuddered. Professor McGonagall turned a scandalized face to the headmaster:

"Albus! You meddled with the Auror Office again? You think Scrimgeour is not going to react when he finds out you're hiding information from him in his own department? Do you want Fudge antagonizing Hogwarts again?"

Dumbledore raised his hands in an appeasing gesture.

"Of course not, Minerva. I have sent an owl to Rufus, explaining him the situation as well as why I believed it best, for the safety and comfort of miss Higurashi, to let her be protected by Hogwarts' wards. I am sure he will show comprehension."

"Rufus Scrimgeour, comprehensive?" huffed McGonagall "And why not Cornelius Fudge with a backbone, or yet, better, Alastor Moody, careless? You can't go around hoping people to behave like what they are not! You-"

She stopped, seeming to remember that this was not a private discussion and turned an eye to face the two teenagers in the room.

"Anyway," McGonagall declared with authority "How did you justify the presence of a non-witch muggle-girl at Hogwarts?"

Dumbledore raised a hand, a smile floating on his lips:

"I told them she was a witch, of course."

"Albus," she sighed "By now, you should know better than to lie to the Ministry."

"Oh but you see, Minerva," the headmaster said with an almost purring tone "I did not lie to them. Young miss Higurashi here might not use a wand, but she does have power."

McGonagall raised a severe eyebrow.

"I did talk with Poppy, you know. And she assured me she did not detect the usual flow of magic in miss Higurashi."

Dumbledore sent her a calm gaze:

"She had enough to pass the wards of the castle."

"Squibs can pass the wards." McGonagall retorted with cold logic.

"She faced Voldemort" proposed Dumbledore "And survived."

"Barely." Retorted McGonagall who seemed to be enjoying the argument "And only because you arrived in time."

A vague memory resurfaced in Harry's mind. Though most of the fight's end had been blurred, the element that he had remembered would probably help clear the magical status of his savior. He raised a timid hand for a few inches before letting it fall to his side. He could not actually remember it that well. Maybe it was stupid.

"Harry," Dumbledore asked with a knowing smile "Is there anything you wish to share with us?"

Harry stared a bit, slightly confused, before remembering that the headmaster seemingly had a way to know what everyone was thinking. Or at least to make everyone believe that he could.

"Um," the young wizard mumbled before straightening "Yes, professor. I would like to say that miss Hiru-… Higaru-… uh…"

He stared at the girl with pleading eyes.

"Kagome Higurashi" professor McGonagall informed him, her eyes narrowed in the usual _ʻyou'd-better-not-make-me-lose-my-timeʼ_ look that was usually reserved to the Weasley twins.

Harry danced from one foot to the other under her scrutiny before remembering he had a backbone:

"Yes, thank you professor. Miss Higurashi here, she blocked…" he hesitated a second, the memory reasserting itself once again in his mind and he continued in a decided voice "I saw her block a Killing curse. Two, actually."

For a second, there was a dead silence.

The Killing Curse was known for being one of the few unstoppable spells. It went right through any shielding spell known to wizardry. There was no _protego_ against it: all you could do was dodge and hope for the best.

"She blocked a Killing Curse from You-Know-Who?" finally whispered McGonagall, the surprise clearly audible in her tone.

Dumbledore turned to the girl, who had remained utterly silent, and requested confirmation:

"The red thing?" she asked a bit confused "It exploded in my face. I can't say I blocked it."

"No," Harry corrected "the green beams."

"The cold ones?"

Surprised glinted in her eyes:

"They're _lethal_?"

"Very much so," confirmed McGonagall darkly "One touch and the target dies."

The girl's face paled. It was very discreet, but Harry was looking at her and he did see her swallow nervously. He could understand. By now, he was kind of used to retrospective frights. He had had mostly the same reaction a few days after he had woken up in the infirmary in his first year and had been explained that he had faced Voldemort. And the same thing had happened when just after his battle against the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets. And after the time he had faced an army of Dementors. And when Voldemort had been resurrected. And that fight in the Department of Mysteries not even a day ago…

Now that he was thinking about it, he wondered if he was ever going to have a normal year at Hogwarts. It seemed as if the universe went out of its way to provide him with deadly challenges.

"Just one touch?" asked the girl with a small voice, bringing him back to the present.

McGonagall nodded gravely:

"One touch and you die. No exception."

Dumbledore cleared his throat, raising an eyebrow at McGonagall while looking intently at Harry, which was no small feat.

The Scottish professor sighed and corrected herself:

"With the only exception of Harry here, who survived the Killing Curse when he was a baby and, by this, brought an end to the First Wizarding War."

The Asian girl turned towards him, astonishment in her dark irises:

"You brought an end to a war when you were a _baby_?"

Harry passed his hand through his hair in an uneasy gesture.

"Yeah… not exactly. The curse just ricocheted on to the caster … and he was the one driving the war, so when he died… it kind of stopped."

He shot a probing glance at his professor and she nodded, encouraging him to keep going. Turning back to the girl, he scratched his temple and spoke with a much lighter tone:

"Because, you know, killing Dark Lords and ending wars… that's stuff you do better when you're a young, right?"

He paused, fighting off the awkwardness.

"Well, actually… I don't think that I _did_ much besides crying my lungs out. I can't even really remember it, and much less brag about it…" he concluded with a small grin that widened when he saw her smile back to him.

Smile with him.

Once again, his right hand went to ruffle his hair but, this time, he was much less nervous. It was actually relieving to speak about all of this dark and twisted fate in such an unserious way. It made it all a lot less threatening. And the attentive expression of the girl was helping a lot. It was neither filled with awe, nor with pity, like most of the people he met on a daily basis and were not his close friends. There was just acknowledgment in her eyes.

The kind of acknowledgment someone would give to their equal.

With renewed confidence, Harry went on:

"And for some reason, everyone thinks I'm a hero!" he exclaimed, raising his hands theatrically "They even call me the Boy Who Lived, can you imagine?"

"What a pompous title," she snorted "Do they really call you that?"

His smile was now wide. He had entirely forgotten that the two professors were watching them intently, an amused expression on their faces.

"Yeah," he answered "In the newspapers, saying how it's neat that I killed someone when I couldn't even talk. But now, they've been mostly telling how I'm plotting a coup against the Ministry… People are crazy."

"Tell me about it…" she sighed with a smirk, rolling her eyes in a dramatic way.

"I mean, it's so obvious that there were external circumstances," he trailed with a fake exasperated face "Dark Lords don't just happen to have a convenient weak spot for defenseless babies."

Kagome nodded abundantly.

"Can't say they have."

"And when he came back, no one believed me."

"Wait, which ʻcoming backʼ are you speaking about? The one after the eleven years of coma or the… when was it?"

"End of my fourth year, summer 1995. He resurrected during the last trial of the Triwizard Tournament-…"

"Wait, hold on" interrupted Kagome, her voice tense "What is the date of today? The entire date."

"19th June 1996." Dumbledore answered.

There was no mirror facing Kagome, and it truly was a shame, because the look on her face was priceless.

XXXXX

"19th June 1996."

 _"What…"_ she thought and then realized she had spoken aloud.

"What?" she repeated, more to clear her mind than anything, but professor McGonagall gave her the date again.

 _1996\. But I jumped in 1999… March 1999._

She slowly shook her head.

 _The well has never done such short lapses before. How can-…_

Another thought hit her. Hard.

 _I haven't fallen through the well yet. My… my younger self hasn't fallen through the well yet… She hasn't broken the Shikon, I can prevent this whole thing!_

Submerged by a sense of urgency, Kagome jolted away, her feet taking her in the direction of the door.

 _I can seal the well forever, before any of this shit happens, and Sango will never have to see her brother kill her whole family, and Shippo will never lose his parents, and Inuyasha…_

She stopped dead in her tracks.

 _And I will not be there to release Inuyasha from Kykyo's spell. He will stay sealed to the Goshinboku for the rest of his life._

 _Yes, but if he's sealed, he'll still be there in the modern era._

She shook her head.

 _Really? A dog-eared half-demon stuck to a tree in the middle of Tokyo? Not going to spark any interest? No one to try and take off the arrow or just kill him?_

 _What tells you people will try to kill him?_

 _People are stupid. And scared of what they don't understand. Also there's Miroku. Do we leave him to be sucked alive by the black hole in his hand?_

 _Well, there's not much we can do…_

 _And Naraku? We're going to let him get away with this? We're going to let him survive to the modern era?_

She shuddered at the thought. The amount of destruction Naraku could bring to people who did not even _know_ about youkai was immeasurable. She clenched her fists. Whatever she chose to do, innocent people would get hurt in the process. The damage she would try to limit in the past could be multiplied tenfold in the future.

Her shoulders slumped, and she felt suddenly very tired.

 _What happens if I let this bastard put his hands on advanced human technology? You imagine Naraku with a nuclear bomb?_

 _… He'd blow us?_

 _He'd blow the fucking world._

 _That's settled, then._

 _Yep._

The risk of atom-bomb armed Naraku notwithstanding, she had read enough science-fiction to learn that temporal paradoxes were a bitch. Trying to prevent herself from opening the well could seriously compromise her current existence.

Her life was an utter mess but she was not really inclined to give it up.

She confidently nodded to herself, quite pleased with her schizophrenically-reached decision not to interfere with her past-self.

"So," she said, turning back to the three wizards.

She noted that Dumbledore was smiling benevolently, as if he had an insight into her mind… which creeped her out to no end.

"So?" asked the old wizard.

"What's the plan? Can you share what you know about Voldemort? His motives, his goals, his flaws, weaknesses, the things that piss him off or might throw him off balance… How do we defeat him?"

A slow grin crept to her lips.

She was back in business.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

 **So... It's finally done! I apologize for the terribly long delay. I had five exams this week and a lot of work the week before. Plus, this chapter is a LOT longer than what I usually do, but I had a set goal on where it was supposed to end and I kept adding new stuff and ideas.**

 **About Dumbledore: He's one of my favorite HP characters and I like to write him as a complex old guy and not just the typical wise and benevolent headmaster most of my friends see him. And, no, Kagome is not going to trust him before a long while, but there are plot and spoiler-related stuff, so I won't tell you (but you can try to guess, of course)**

 **Now, for those of you who are curious about Japanese magic schools, you might be interested to know that I entirely made up Yozora Hikan (Its full name is** ** _Yozora Hikan, Maho to Majutsu no Gakko_** **, by the way). And for the few nagging readers that are going to try to translate it, I'll spare you the trouble:** ** _Yozora_** **means "night sky" and** ** _Kikan_** **can mean "institute" and "academy". It basically translates to "Nightsky Institute, school of wizardry and witchcraft". And yes, we'll hear a bit more about it, but I won't shift the focus too much out of Hogwarts, don't worry.**

 **I think I like writing longer chapters, but it means I won't be able to update as often. What do you guys think? Chapter 12 will see the return of Sirius and Tenseiga, so it's obviously not going to be a short installment. And if your reviews give me enough motivation, I might post it before Christmas comes... (just saying)**

 **So... if you want a tease, YES, next chapter, you finally get to read about Sirius finally meeting Tenseiga's wielder. (isn't that great?)**

 _ **Lord Fluff is coming...**_

 _ **Brace yourselves.**_

 **On that tease, I wish you all an excellent Christmas (or whatever holiday you celebrate in winter)**

 **Sincerely,**

 **Claywind**


	12. Haunting Ghosts

**Disclaimer:** I am neither J. K. Rowling, nor Rumiko Takahashi and I do NOT own the Harry Potter universe or the Inuyasha universe. No matter how much I want to.

 **Rating:** M, for adult themes, mild swearing, violence and lemon

 **Warnings:** This is actually not going to turn into a crack fic. I think. Also, gore ahead.

XXX-XXX-XXX

Sirius looked at the black, rocky slope of the mountain and groaned.

They had been walking for way too long and his feet were killing him. No, actually, what was killing him was the fact that his feet were _killing_ him regardless of the fact the he was _already dead_.

Not to mention that he was a ghost, which made the whole _ʻ_ _killing himʼ_ thing absolutely paradoxical, if not completely overkill to his brain cells.

Wait, no. Not _ʻ_ over _killʼ_. Damn! He was doing it again!

Lost in his metaphors and colloquial language, he did not notice Tenseiga's worried expression as she turned towards him.

The demonic sword had delayed their return to her body to go check on her creator. Totosai was maybe a sniveling coward who could not realize how wonderful, brilliant and overall _absolutely perfect_ her wielder was, but he was still very knowledgeable when it came to youkai weapons. And if they had to find something whose sole purpose was to cut, as Bokuseno had advised, it would stand within reason that the old blacksmith would be able to hint them in the correct direction.

If he could see them, that is.

They began their slow ascension of the steep slope. Sirius grumbled curses under his breath. He had yet to master the unhindered walk that Tenseiga was pulling off so effortlessly – he did not care that she had probably centuries of experience in the area – and the slope was really slippery. He tripped and fell down a few meters. Cursing, he got back to his feet, ignoring Tenseiga's slightly worried expression.

What kind of Confunduns-blasted idiot would settle on a freaking inapproachable mountain to build his forge?

After a good hour of losing his balance in the tricky rocks, Sirius eventually gave up and asked Tenseiga if she would be kind enough to let him ride her dog form.

She had not transformed since they had travelled to meet Bokuseno. Suspecting that she was somehow ashamed of her more extrovert – and terribly snarky – canine personality, Sirius has not pressed her to carry him – they had the time, after all, it was not like he was going to age.

But right now, he was really frustrated with the damned slope and, even though he did not think it possible, he was tired. It was probably due to what Tenseiga had called the ʻrule of mental expectationʼ. If he believed that climbing a mountain would tire him, then it would.

Of course, Tenseiga believed nothing of the sort and was thus as fresh as a rose.

But then, she always looked stunning.

Sirius's request was met with clear uneasiness, but before he could retract it, she had begun to transform. Once again, Sirius was struck by how beautiful her metamorphosis was.

His animagus powers turned him into a black dog in a fraction of second, the form taking over like a second skin rippling over his body, but Tenseiga's transformation was nothing like that. For once, it took a lot more time. Also, it looked really cool.

Her golden irises shrank to turquoise dots, the white sclera turning a luminous shade of red, and the fine lines on her cheek became jagged. Her features elongated, her teeth turning to fangs, her polished nails to deadly claws. Her skin paled and her white kimono was enshrouded in what looked like a thick boa of fur. The boa grew and enshrouded her, attaching itself to her frame until her silhouette had grown to thrice its original size. Its shape kept changing, like waves of creamy fur under an unperceivable wind, until she had assumed the form of an elephant-sized dog.

Sirius frowned, perplex. Wasn't she bigger than before?

Red eyes focused on him and he was met with the sight of a toothy grin.

"Close your mouth, Sirius" rumbled a mirthful voice, "we don't want a bird to nest in it, do we?"

Sirius closed his mouth and the dog's grin spread wider.

"Why are you bigger?" he asked bluntly.

"Because I transformed," she replied, shrugging her massive shoulders. "I know you're not the sharpest blade in the blacksmith's forge, but that one seemed rather obvious."

Sirius sighed. The change in personality was even more drastic than before.

"I meant: why is this dog form bigger than the one before? And you knew that."

Tenseiga trotted a bit down the slope to place herself under him and offered her back.

"Hop on, and I'll explain while we climb. Have I already mentioned that you're slower than an imp-toad?"

"Yes, you have," replied Sirius while climbing the furry flanks of the white eleph-…dog. "A blind grandmother, if I remember correctly."

"You do. Also let me add limping… or, rather, legless."

She nodded abundantly, jumping from rock to rock:

"You're slower than a blind, legless antique imp-toad grandmother."

"Thanks for the precisions," sighed Sirius, holding tight to her fur in fear of falling down, "I couldn't have lived without knowing exactly what kind of weird handicapped creature is faster than me."

She barked joyfully.

"My pleasure, really."

"I insist," he replied with irony, "you have all my gratitude, O agile and rapid one."

She made a huge jump over what seemed to be a bottomless pit and Sirius had to repress a – quite girlish – scream of fright. He had a feeling she would never stop teasing him about it if he let her know he was scared of her… driving skills.

"My, my," purred Tenseiga, "aren't you profuse in compliments, today… What do you want? A bone?"

Unclenching his fingers from their tight grip on her fur, he breathed out an annoyed:

"No, I want the answer you promised."

"I promised no such thing," she replied with a fake haughty tone.

"Yes, you di-… just give me the damn answer."

She turned a mirthful red eye to him:

"To which question, I beg you?"

"You know which question!" he exclaimed.

"So what?" she purred. "Humor me."

"Fine. Why are you bigger?"

She shrugged, making him bump on her back and he had to clutch at her fur again.

"Because I transformed," she declared. "Not the brightest blade, indeed…"

"Tenseiga!"

A hiccupped rumble between his legs informed him that she was laughing. He sighed. He was beginning to realize why she had seemed reluctant to assume her dog form.

"All right," she eventually stated, regaining a semblance of composure. "My dog size can vary at will within a certain span. I can take the form of a small pup or assume the same greatness as my father."

This was no indication of how big exactly she could become, but, considering her back was already a good three meters above her feet, there was not much that would surprise him in terms of canine height today.

"That's… cool, I guess. Then why are you bigger here? Any reason?"

"It is not that I am bigger here. Rather, I was smaller in the forest. I had to restrain my size."

Sirius raised an inquisitive eyebrow:

"Why's that?"

"You would have undoubtedly hit your head at each and every branch if I had not."

Her tone indicated that she would have found this occurrence extremely amusing. He decided to salvage what remained of his pride and looked ahead in silence. The top of the mountain had approached swiftly and they were only a few devastating jumps away from completing the ascension.

XXXXX

From Tenseiga's back, Sirius gulped in silence.

A volcano. The forge was built in the middle of a volcano. And the ground looked like barely cooled magma.

Tenseiga trotted on the fuming soil, entirely unaffected by the small streams of bright orange lava that slowly erupted occasionally from the cracks in the magma's surface. She did not ask him to get down, for which he was grateful. He absolutely _expected_ to get burned to the third degree if he walked down there. Which meant that he would.

 _Stupid rule of mental expectation._

They approached what looked like the bony remains of some huge creature. It was standing on a colder looking part of the magma – there were no streams of liquid lava, which was kind of his only clue. When they had reached the entrance, Tenseiga laid down which was her way of saying the ride was over. With great reluctance, Sirius glided along her left flank, where what appeared to be a safe patch of the ground. As his feet were not suddenly set ablaze, Sirius estimated that the ground looked cold enough to be safe. Or rather, it looked safe enough to be cold.

Turning back to her human form, Tenseiga entering the bone-sculpted shelter, calling softly:

"Totosai, can you hear me?"

Sirius followed and discovered a bony old man in a battered dark kimono, with huge bulging eyes. He was spitting fire on a white-hot metallic line, which Sirius assumed was a sword of some sort.

Between two spits of fire, the blacksmith was mumbling to himself. He did not respond to their entrance, nor when Tenseiga approached him and tapped his shoulder.

"Totosai?"

The blacksmith ceased to spit fire at the blade and scratched his head looking at it intently. Tenseiga leaned toward the old man, until her head was next to his.

"Totosai!" she yelled in his ear.

The old blacksmith interrupted his contemplation of the white-hot blade and looked around. The smile that had begun to creep on Tenseiga's lips disappeared when Totosai got up and plunged the heated blade in some kind of stone cylinder where the liquid burst into flames.

Tenseiga groaned in aggravation:

"This is useless. Let us depart."

Sirius agreed wholeheartedly with the decision.

"We're finally going to apparate… I mean teleport to your body?"

"It seems so," she stated coolly while her silhouette began to glow. "Prepare yourself."

Before Sirius could ask for what exactly he should prepare himself for, he felt a vicious pull in his guts – quite similar to the effect of a portkey, actually. This time, he could not hold the high-pitched girlish scream.

With a gush of wind, they vanished.

XXXXX

Totosai wiped his brow of the sweat and looked at his future masterpiece. He had successfully gone through the complex process of balancing the demonic energies within the blade and could now breathe and take a pause. He had been focused on his work for the last two days and he was getting really hungry. As on cue, his stomach growled loudly to complain for its unjustified emptiness. The old blacksmith put down the white-hot blade in the cold oil recipient.

The oil erupted with flames as the metal cooled down. He let it for a few seconds before taking it out and putting it back on his workbench.

A gush of wind filled the giant bone shelter and Totosai peered curiously at his perfectly normal surroundings.

"That's strange," he mumbled to himself, "I could have sworn there was someone else in here…"

XXXXX

Sirius wanted to puke.

The stomach-lurching teleportation that Tenseiga had inflicted them – horrible and nauseous as it may have been – was, however, not responsible.

The bloodied battlefield was.

Everywhere his eyes would fall, dismembered corpses and severed limbs caused a new twist in his innards. Sirius had lived through the First Wizarding War. He had seen battles – and fought himself. He had seen dead bodies. People he had loved, murdered in their houses. But the corpse left by a Killing Curse was in no way comparable with the butchery that was unfolded under his eyes. The true horror of Voldemort's reign had been the fear he had instigated to the whole of Magical Britain. The people that he killed – countless as they were – were mostly killed cleanly, or out of sight. And never in such a huge number.

Now, for the first time in his life, Sirius was faced with the actual result of a full-scaled battle. As he looked at the bloodied innards scattered around, he vaguely remembered fantasizing about Godric Gryffindor's time, when he was still a student at Hogwarts. Stories of the legendary wizard who fought his battles with his magical sword never ceased to amaze him. He had found it heroic, these stories of knights, bravely marching on to battle evil, their shimmering swords raised in the sunlight.

Swords were awesome, weren't they?

He fought another nauseous wave as he realized that _this_ was what a war fought with swords looked like. It was bloody. It was messy. It was horrible. It was going to make him puke.

He wondered if his will would be strong enough to convince himself that ghosts did not have stomachs and thus did not feel the need to vomit. After a few minutes of this thought turning in his head, he decided to look at Tenseiga instead.

She seemed pristine and walked through the slaughter with a calm – if slightly disapproving – face. Then, Sirius realized that her eyes were fastened on a pale silhouette walking away from the carnage with measured steps.

Was he the author of the massacre?

"Come, Sirius," she commanded with an edgy voice. "It is time you meet my wielder."

He did not comment on the moist he could discern at the corner of her eyes and simply followed her.

They reached the pale silhouette and, when they went around him, Sirius's brain kinda smacked itself.

He had been expecting Tenseiga's wielder to be old and venerable. And from the back, his white hair had confirmed his supposition. He had not expected however, the sight that was now gracing his eyes.

The young man – around his early twenties, perhaps? – looked like he could be Tenseiga's twin brother. He had the same indigo markings on his face, the same crescent moon, the same silver white hair – although his hair did respect the common laws of physics and were not floating around him – the same golden eyes and even the same color pattern in his clothes.

Also, he had two swords.

One had a red handle and looked like a European medieval double-handed sword while the other laid in a black and dark blue scabbard and was more Japanese looking.

Sirius eyed them, guessing without too much trouble that the Japanese sword was Tenseiga's real body. It looked exactly – from what he could remember – like the sword he had seen her use in white King's Cross. He paused.

Tenseiga's real body was a sword.

He had had the time to get used to it, but the idea still felt very weird.

He turned toward her spirit form:

"So, that is… your wielder."

She nodded proudly.

"Yes. That is Lord Sesshomaru, son of the Inu no Taisho, Lord of the Western Lands and legitimate wielder of the Fang of Heaven."

"That's a lot of titles."

She raised her chin, proudly:

"My wielder is worthy of them."

He nodded, slowly.

"He looks young."

"Youkai do not age the same way humans do. Their minds grow fast, but their body's growth slows over time."

"So," Sirius slowly rephrased, "the older he'll get, the slower he'll age?"

She nodded.

"Basically, yes."

"How old is he, then?"

She paused and seemed to contemplate the question.

"I do not know the exact answer," she eventually replied. "I know he is older than me, since I was forged after his birth, when he was still a youth. I have served him for two centuries, and, before that, I was wielded by the Inu no Taisho for at least a century… Lord Sesshomaru is at least three hundred years old. Probably a bit more, but I doubt he is over four centuries."

"I see. So you are three hundred years old, too, right?"

"More or less."

"Okay, last question: why does he look like you?"

Tenseiga's cheeks turned an interesting shade of crimson. Sirius blinked, quite confused at her embarrassment. Then a slow smirk crept to his lips:

"A problem, Tenseiga?" he asked with a knowing grin. "Was that a sensitive question, by any chance?"

She blushed deeper and, even though her discomfort was evident, Sirius decided that he enjoyed it immensely.

 _Take that, you snarky dog!_

She stared intently at the ground and mumbled something inaudible.

"Can you repeat?" he smirked. "I didn't quite catch all of that."

She snapped her head up, cheeks literally glowing red:

"This-is-not-him-who-looks-like-me-but-me-who-looks-like-him-and-I-am-not-in-my-true-form-but-since-he's-my-wielder-I-believe-I-should-display-it-through-my-appearance!"

It took a few seconds for Sirius to decipher the rapidly pronounced string of syllables, but when that was done he wondered what was so embarrassing about the answer.

"Um, okay. Er, there's nothing to be ashamed about, you know."

Her blush slowly receded (which was a good thing because she was beginning to look like a scarlet glow-worm). Sirius patted her shoulder. There was nothing embarrassing in wanting to show a connection to the person you worked for.

 _Unless, of course…_

"Ahem, Tenseiga?"

"Y-yes?" she stammered, trying to regain her composure and failing when she spotted the huge grin on his face:

"Are you _in love_ with your wielder?"

This time, the red of her blush had somehow found a way to reach her hair and clothes.

"A-absolutely _not_!" she shrieked with a slightly stammering voice. "How can you even suggest such a thing! I am not _infatuated_ with my wielder! I am his _sword_ and I shall follow him and serve him until the end of the world, and- Why are you _laughing_ at me?"

As it was, Sirius was rolling on the ground, hugging his belly in a vain attempt to contain his laughs.

XXXXX

Sirius wiped the thick saliva from his shoulder, grumbling.

Being held inside the maw of a snarling humongous dog had effectively stopped his almost hysterical laughter. Even if Tenseiga could not actually hurt him, since he was a ghost, and had certainly no intention of doing so – though he was not sure of that last one – he still was not happy at all to find out that, yes, his brain apparently _expected_ ghost saliva to stick to his ghost clothes on his ghost body.

Had he mentioned that he was a ghost?

So Sirius was grumbling a bit, following Tenseiga's (thankfully) human form trotting after her wielder who had obviously not waited for them.

They eventually reached him again and, this time, Sirius noticed two things that he had previously not paid attention to.

First, a few feet away from Tenseiga's wielder, was a bubbling dark purplish cloud with two arms protruding off of it. Scaled dark purple arms, with elongated claws, and they were not even where arms should normally be – well, it was difficult to assert the exact standard position of arms _on a cloud_.

"What is that?" he asked, pointing at the ominous thing.

"That," Tenseiga replied through gritted teeth, "is Tokijin. My wielder's _other_ blade."

From her icy tone, it was clear that she held no sympathy for the purple cloud. Sirius shivered. He could understand. The thing oozed malicious intent.

How he was able to feel what the purplish cloud emitted or even identify it was beyond him.

"This disgusting mess does not deserve to be called a sword," she added with barely concealed disgust. "You cannot make a good blade from a defeated oni's fang. I do not know what my wielder was thinking when he commissioned it. It's unpredictable and blood thirsty. At least my wielder keeps it on leash."

She pointed at the greenish glowing chains enshrouding the scaled arms' wrists. They were floating from the cloud to Tenseiga's wielder's claws, forcing the cloud to follow his moves. It was effectively on a leash.

"Still," Tenseiga added, "do not get too close from it."

Sirius nodded. That would not have crossed his mind.

The second strange thing was a pale, blurred silhouette that gave him a headache when he tried to look at it for more than a few seconds. It took a few minutes of examining and diverting his eyes before Sirius could deduce that the silhouette was a spirit.

And the spirit had no face.

No matter how hard Sirius tried, every time his eyes landed on the spirit's head, there was a confusing blank in his mind and he could not prevent his attention to be diverted. There was something under his eyes, but he could not remember it even for a fraction of second after he had averted his eyes for anything else in his sight. In fact, even when he was looking at the spirit's lack of face, he could not retain the information. It was as if there was something to see, but his brain would not register it. Maybe there was actually _nothing to see_ , and that was what his mind could not tolerate…

Seeming blissfully untouched by the headache-inducing phenomenon, Tenseiga waved at the faceless spirit:

"Hello, Mumei. I have returned."

The strange spirit did not say anything and Tenseiga turned back to Sirius:

"This is Mumei. He is extremely peaceful; you do not risk anything by his side."

Sirius eyed Tenseiga's wielder, searching for a third blade but did not find any.

"Is he a sword too?" he asked.

She brought a thumb to her lips:

"Not that I know. I do not really know much about him. He does not either; at least, that's what I believe."

Sirius decided that he would be polite and bowed his head (bowing his head also allowed him to avoid looking at the spirit absence of face without being rude, so it was a plus.)

"Em… Hello," he hesitated, "I'm… pleased to meet you, Mumei. I am Sirius Black."

The spirit did not answer so Sirius looked up at him… and at a tree, back at the spirit… and at the grass, back at the spirit… and at the sky…

This was getting seriously annoying. Forcing his eyes to listen to him – despite the fact that eyes had no ears – he decided to focus on Mumei's translucent hands.

"I'm honored to meet you," Sirius tried again, wondering if there was something wrong in his greeting.

"Mumei does not speak," Tenseiga informed him. "To be honest I'm not even sure if he can hear you right now. There are times when he is here without _being_ _here_."

"What… is he?"

"I am not sure," she answered, shaking her head slowly. "Mumei was here when my wielder came to retrieve me from Bokuseno. I do not know what he is exactly or where he is from, but he exudes the same kind of aura as my sister and myself… even if it is also very different. I cannot explain it but I believe he is a relic of the past. He could be one of my wielder's previous swords. A broken blade."

He noticed how the last two words had a weight of their own. ʻBroken bladeʼ did not seem to be a lightly used term.

"What? Can you explain what that is?"

"Demonic swords can die, but they cannot be killed."

"Sorry to repeat myself, but… _what_?"

"We do not die unless we choose to. When our blade is broken, we are hurt in a horrible way but we do not disappear unless it is our wish. A broken blade remains a ghastly shadow of its ancient being, an empty shell. I think Mumei was broken in battle and could not move on. He chose to cling to the vestiges of his life and his shadow remained to watch over my wielder. He never leaves his side."

Sirius noticed the profound awe and respect in Tenseiga's tone.

"Do you think it's a good thing?" he asked cautiously. "To refuse to move on to the afterlife?"

She turned to him, clearly sensing that the question was not only about Mumei.

"No," she stated softly, "I do not. I am saddened by his choice, because it means that he forsook his afterlife. He will never be at peace. But I admire his loyalty and I hope to be able to prove mine, although not in a similar way."

They remained silent for a bit, simply following Tenseiga's wielder's measured pace.

"So what do we do, now?"

"We wait. We need to find someone who can see or hear us and ask them to pass on the knowledge to my wielder. The other possibility is if we stumble across what my uncle mentioned."

"The thing that cuts through everything?"

"Yes, that."

"I don't like our chances."

"If it can comfort you, my wielder is likely to investigate such an object, if he hears of it."

"Cool. Now he just needs to be told about it. Shouldn't be that hard."

She did not answer and they walked in silence for a while.

"If he can't speak," abruptly asked Sirius while pointing at Mumei, "then how do you know his name?"

"I do not," she replied evenly, " _Mumei_ is something I came up with a few decades ago and he responded to it, that's all. When I was still young, though, I called him _Kaonashi_. But he grew to dislike it, so I had to find another one."

"How did he tell you he didn't like his name? How do you guys communicate?"

If he was to have only these three to talk to, then he'd better learn how to have a conversation with Mumei, because Tokijin was clearly off-limits. And talking only to Tenseiga – no matter the variety that her shifts in personality would bring – would certainly drive him mad.

"Signs," was her laconic answer.

 _Damn._

That was not going to be easy.

 _Well, if I get bored, I can always try to haunt that wielder of hers…_

XXX-XXX-XXX

 **And that was chapter 12, folks! It's finally finished. I had kind of a small writer's block, but it should be gone by now. I hope you enjoyed it.**

 **I got to finally introduce Mumei. (I had been itching to get to him for a while, so I'm happy) He's the first non-canon character of the story, as long as you don't count the blades (though his importance will not be revealed before the story's finale).**

 **At first I had decided to call him** ** _Kaonashi_** **(which literally means** ** _the faceless_** **) but then I remembered a bit of info that will be crucial to the later plot, so I had to change his name for** ** _Mumei_** **(** ** _nameless_** **). But then, I was sad that I would not have to mention his first name (because I thought it sounded cool), so I decided he could have both (thanks, Tenseiga). He doesn't do much here, but he'll be back at some point. He's kind of my Checkhov's Gun (for those of you who don't know what that is, the concept is explained on tvtropes)**

 **Also, you might have noticed by know that I tend to mess up the Harry Potter character's names. I want to apologize for that. I've read the books in my mother tongue (French) a lot more than I have in English (I don't think I've read all of them in English, though I intend to at some point). And the French translation tends to switch the names of a lot of things (as you may have noticed, I confused** ** _Fumseck_** **for** ** _Fawkes_** **in chapter 11, and** ** _Pomfresh_** **for** ** _Pomfrey_** **in chapter 9) A lot of the magical stuff has a different name too. Believe it or not, but this chap was delayed for a day because I had to go find the name of the apparating device for long-distance travel (if you were curious, it's called a** ** _portoloin_** **in French) I do my best to use the proper terminology (and spend countless hours on the HP English wikia), but mistakes are bound to happen. As I correct and edit my texts a lot, if you spot a mistake, don't hesitate to mention it, because I will rectify it as fast as I can. (I'm usually mortified when I realize that I've uploaded a chapter with such a flagrant mistake)**

 **Oh and if any of you guys can guess what is the reason behind Tenseiga's shift in personality when she morphs into her dog form, you'll get to ask a question (any question) about the plot and I'll answer in PM.**

 **With that, I bid you farewell. Next chapter will be Hermione in her first real fight(s) of the Sengoku Jidai. It's gonna a be a loooong chapter.**

 **Sincerely,**

 **Claywind**


	13. Witch and Distrusts

**Disclaimer:** I am neither J. K. Rowling, nor Rumiko Takahashi and I do NOT own the Harry Potter universe or the Inuyasha universe. No matter how much I want to.

 **Rating:** M, for adult themes, mild swearing, violence and (eventually) lemon

 **Warnings:** Inuyasha's foul mouth and some innuendos

XXXXX

In the dim light of Kaede's hut, Hermione was chanting her incantations. The elderly priestess had gone outside to gather herbs, Sango was training in a field near the outskirt of the village and Miroku had followed her. With her remained only Inuyasha who was eying her skeptically.

Her first attempts at locating the jewel shards – or "Shikon shards", "shards of the Shikon", "shards of the Shikon jewel", "Shikon fragments", "fragments of the Shikon, etc…– with the "point-me" spell had proven to be a waste of time. She had tried all possible combinations she could think of in a succeeding order and had eventually given up on finding the exact wording if there was one. She was now transitioning to her second self-imposed task, namely locating that ʻNarakuʼ guy.

Muttering the incantation for what must have been the tenth or eleventh time today, she was eventually rewarded when her wand suddenly stilled its rotating motion to point almost avidly in the direction of… well, somewhere. (She made a mental note to ask for a map of the country as soon as would be humanly possible)

Noticing the shift in her countenance, Inuyasha came closer and looked at her stilled wand.

"So, your magic's broken or something?"

She shook her head, looking in the direction her wand indicated.

"No, it means I can point to where Naraku is."

"Finally some good news!" he exclaimed. "How come you can't do the same with the Shikon shards?"

He had tried asking that question when she was casting the spell and had been politely (but firmly) told to let her concentrate. The "point-me" was not that complex but the incantations were long, tedious, and most of the middle part was a horrific tongue-twister. Add that to the fact that her magic could apparently not pick up on these Shikon shards – for reasons she could not explain or certify with a hundred percent accuracy – and you had a frustrated Hermione.

"I see three possible causes," she replied with a sigh. "One: the shards could be too far. That's improbable, but the "point-me" has some limits, range-wise. And if something is under me or over me, my wand will just turn madly. But I doubt it's that. Japan is not that big, my spell should at least cover two third of its territory. And since I can point to Naraku, and you assured me that he has some shards, it makes no sense for the spell to reach him but not his fragments."

Inuyasha nodded.

"And the other causes?"

"Well," she trailed slowly, "another possibility could be that I have never seen a shard. The spell needs some sort of base to function. If I cannot give a suitable and truthful model to search, then the "point-me" cannot search, and thus it will not be able to find anything."

Inuyasha nodded again and seemed to get lost in his thoughts.

Hermione frowned slightly, thinking back on what she had just explained. The second explanation was not very plausible either – although more than the first, but that was easy. However, it had been stated as a possible cause of the failure of the spell in " _Tracking Magics: a History_ " and she would not reject it without verification.

As for why the spell would pick on Naraku, she hypothesized that she knew more about him than about the shards.

For starter, he was a living being with ambitions and motivations – things that she could comprehend – and had probably some loosely understandable biology even if he was not human. And had been described as human-looking (when he was not a bubbling mass of countless lesser youkai) which gave her a good mental image. She had also been told his story, she knew a bit of her past, she knew he had desired a now dead – but resurrected – priestess named Kikyo and that he hated Inuyasha. All of these were concepts that she could grasp, and thus, her model for Naraku was really advanced.

But the shards? She had no idea if they had motivations – let alone what they were, if that was the case – nor what they were made of. She just knew that the Shikon was cursed. Apparently. But even that was extremely vague. And now that it was fragmented, she could not even produce a clear mental image, because, a pink spherical pearl, that was easy enough to imagine, but hundreds of different randomly fragmented pieces of a mineral whole? Her mind was good, but not _that_ good.

Inuyasha interrupted her train of thoughts:

"If you've never seen the shards and it's the reason you can't find them, then how you can find Naraku? You've never met him."

It was logical that her previous answer would prompt this question. Before she could answer with a sufficiently complete answer, his eyes narrowed:

"…Or have you?"

He observed her suspiciously and she did not fail to notice that his hand had closed the distance with his hip and was now casually – and not very subtly – resting on the guard his sword.

"Because if you're working for him," he growled in a low threatening voice, "lemme just warn you. Whatever that asshole promised you, whatever he made you think we did, it's probably crap and you'll end up dead or worse."

Hermione blinked at the sudden change in personality. She was not sure of what she was supposed to respond to that. Books had taught her that those who had the perfect arguments to counter suspicion were usually the traitors and she tended to have really good arguments, so if she could convince him with flawless logic that there was no possible way for her to betray them to some evil being bent on world world domination, Inuyasha might suspect her even further.

Assuming he had read the same books as her.

She kept staring at him, realizing that he was becoming more and more edgy as her silence stretched. He was probably assuming that if she needed so much time to come up with an answer it was because she was going to lie. That was also an occurrence that her books had warned her about. She really did not want to be the innocent who gets blamed because she was too dumbstruck of being accused to claim her innocence.

 _Darn. I should have just refuted when I had the time. Now everything I say is going to sound suspicious._

"Well?" he huffed and his voice had taken a dangerous intonation "Speak, wench!"

 _Crap. Has he read the same books as me?_

From his tense posture, she could guess that his patience was wearing thin and that she was slowly shifting from the case _'_ _possible enemy'_ to _'_ _definite enemy'_. She could not remain quiet much longer or she was going to get herself killed. (or worse … expelled from their village. Ron was right, she really had to rearrange the order of her priorities).

"Can you read?" she blurted out, forcing her lips to articulate a sentence. For once, her overanalyzing mind had not been on her side.

"What?"

 _Good. He doesn't look to angry anymore. Just surprised… okay, surprised and angry._

She sighed.

"Just… just answer me, please."

He huffed and looked at the door, as if making sure there wasn't anyone around.

"Only a few kanjis. I listen when Miroku's teaching Shippo."

"Okay, thanks." she nodded absentmindedly, her mind wondering how much one could learn to read by just listening and glimpsing from afar.

"Don't try to escape my question!" he barked. "Are you working with Naraku or not?"

They had definitely not read the same books, so she decided that she was free to use flawless logic to prove that she was not a traitor. She prepared her arguments carefully, quickly ordering them through what would be the best rhetorical strategy.

Cicero would have been proud.

"I'm not working for Naraku," she asserted slowly, steeling herself for what was about to be a trying discussion, "and I've never met him either."

He sniffed at her and visibly relaxed.

"Good," he huffed. "Sorry 'bout that."

She stared at him.

"What?" he grumbled. "Why're ya lookin' at me like that? I got somethin' on my face?"

She kept staring.

"What?" he asked again.

"You suspect that I might have been working for your deadliest enemy, who's some sort of master manipulator, and, when I say _'nope, I don't',_ you immediately _trust_ me?"

He shrugged.

"Keh. You didn't smell like lying."

Her eyes widened a bit.

"There's a … difference?"

He "keh-ed" and peered at a wall.

"You can smell when people are lying?" she probed.

"Yeah."

"Really?" she asked once more, with awe in her voice.

"Yeah" he repeated, shrugging it off as one of his numerous scent-based powers.

He briefly glanced at her face and recognized the spark of curiosity in her gaze. The same glint that had lighted her eyes this morning when he had gone for a patrol around the village and had spent it answering to an endless stream of questions about youkai behaviors and powers, and how human and youkai interacted. He had not shared much – most of it was personal history – but it seemed that she could guess what she was allowed to ask and when she should change the subject, which was a bit puzzling.

That or, unlike Kagome, Miroku and Sango, she was actually paying attention to the signals he was sending. Apart from Shippo and Kirara, his friends were usually blindly dismissing his cues, and he was always baffled when it ended up being his fault for snapping out when he had been sending clear 'please-drop-it' warnings for more than half an hour.

He found it fun how she seemed to be drinking her words like a newborn pup listening to her parents. And then, she would suddenly blurt out a theory that grounded its foundations on such complex bases that he did not even attempt to understand what she could possibly mean. He liked the idea that someone who already knew so much would still see him as a source of knowledge and be interested in what he had to teach. Miroku and Kagome never asked him about the way his powers worked or what he knew of a situation besides what his heightened perceptions would pick on. They just asked him to use his powers and complained when it was not enough.

He had to admit that he liked Hermione. He did not entirely trust her, yet – far from it – but he liked her. She paid attention to his ears and his posture – and was apparently able to decrypt them – and attributed the same importance to his body language she did his words. It was relaxing not being forced to translate everything he expressed into human speech. In short, she listened, which was a rare quality among humans.

Also, she had not tried to kill him yet, which was always a plus.

For all these reasons, when Hermione asked how he could smell lies, he decided to share more than a simple "that's how it works" and began to explain the world of scents in social situations from the point of view of an inu.

Needless to say, she was interested.

XXXXX

"I need to be close to the person," concluded Inuyasha. "It helps if I've had a bit of time to get used to their scent and learn how their emotions shift their smell.

He paused, and added:

"Two days with you being around is more than enough, 'specially since we slept together."

"We did not…" she began before stopping, "oh, you meant in the same room."

"Of course," he huffed. "Whaddya think I was talking abou-…"

He suddenly got very silent and his eyes darted away.

"…Oh, right," he muttered. "Er…"

His ears were fidgeting in an uneasy way and if he had had a tail, Hermione was certain it would have been between his legs. She caught him briefly glancing at her, looking like a puppy that would have peed on her bed and was now afraid to get smacked. This was just way too cute. A bright smile lit her face:

"No, that's okay," she chirped in a playful tone, before adding with a more malicious smirk: "I'm sure you're used to sleep with everyone. Sango, Kaede…"

His face snapped back to her, ears straightening up before dropping to the sides of his head, which was really _terribly_ cute.

"Oï, wench!" he barked in a gruff yet uncertain voice.

He was clearly blushing, now. Even in the dim penumbra, she could see it clearly.

"What about Miroku?" she proposed, wiggling her eyebrows "I hope he didn't ask you to bear his child. I'm told he tends to do that."

This time, his ears flattened to the back of his skull, informing her that the subject was probably better avoided.

"I'm no fucking village girl!" Inuyasha confirmed, his heated voice a lot louder than what he had probably anticipated.

Of course, Miroku and Sango – who had been coming back from the slayer's training session – chose this moment to enter the hut.

"Well, of course you're not a girl" placated a confused Miroku "You're a perfectly handsome specimen of male hanyou and I'm sure you'll have beautiful children, one day."

The confused monk was even more confused when Inuyasha stormed out of the hut, his face as red as his fire-rat, leaving a madly-giggling Hermione in his trail.

That damn wench was even more dangerous than Kagome.

Inside the hut, Sango raised an inquisitive eyebrow at the barely breathing witch and asked in a quite jaded tone:

"Can we know what's been going on?"

Hermione shook her head, wiping the moisture of her eyes – it had been a while since she had laughed like that.

"I think some things are better left unsaid," she eventually answered, breathing slowly to regain her composure. "Besides, I've got news."

Sango nodded and went to sit down by her side. Miroku did the same, only two feet away from them. The evening before, he had groped Hermione. Her knee-kick reaction had been lighting fast, and deadly precise. Which explained why he was not taking the risk of letting his cursed hand roam around the witch anymore.

Not. Ever. Again.

Sango's question brought him out of his painful memory:

"What are these news? Good?"

"Mostly" Hermione replied with a slight pout "But for the bad news, I can't track the Shikon shards."

"Why's that?" asked Miroku from his safe distance.

"They could be out of range," she explained curtly "or it's because I don't know how they function well enough – I should be able to verify that if we get our hands on one – but, mostly, I think I'm not using the right wording for them."

"How can 'Shikon shards' not be the right word?" asked Sango in a confused tone "The Shikon no Tama was fragmented. They are fragments of the Shikon… I don't see what's problematic. Your theory of the distance seems more realistic… Kagome couldn't-"

A loud and angry "keh" sounded outside and Sango reformulated:

"Kagome _cannot_ sense shards that are too far away from her."

"But from what Kaede told me," countered Hermione, "Kagome's powers as a priestess are limited to her own personal energy. She extends her … aura around her and can feel what's inside of it, correct?"

Miroku nodded and she continued:

"Magic does not require me to lose much of my energy. When I cast, I borrow the ambient magic and I canalize it through my body, while using my wand as a focal point. Wizards who exhaust themselves do so because they cast spells that demand too much magic than what they can hold within their bodies. The ambient magic is there but cannot enter because they're saturated, so, in order for the spell to function, they have to provide the complementary energy from their personal resources."

"That sounds dangerous," mused Miroku.

She crossed her arms.

"You can interrupt a spell at any point of the casting. It is dangerous purely if you're stubborn enough to try to cast the spell despite knowing that you can't handle it. But only a fool would do that."

"What about your spell?" Sango asked with a concerned voice. "Is it too consuming?"

It was obvious she would not agree to Hermione putting her life at risk for their quest.

"Ya better not kill yourself over this, wench," grumbled Inuyasha while reentering the hut. (He had apparently recovered from his recent outburst.)

The young witch shook her head and smiled.

"There's no danger at all. The "point-me" spell requires the amount of energy I would need to lift an empty cup for a few minutes. That's practically nothing. I could probably do that entirely with my personal resources without getting tired."

This one was probably not entirely true, but she had not found the time – or a way – to experiment safely with internally powered magic.

"So what was that about incorrect words in you spell?" asked Inuyasha, "That's why you can find Naraku but not the shards?"

She stared at him, a bit flabbergasted:

"Oh, right, we were talking about that. I'm surprised you remember the beginning of the conversation."

"Keh." He looked at the entrance, as if offended. "Don't take me for a dumb guy, just because I don't talk much."

He folded his hands in his sleeves.

"I listen a lot."

Hermione grinned.

"Alright. My theory is that I'm using an incorrect word. You see, in order to use the "point-me" spell, you have to know the object's real name, the name its creator used to define it. That's why it's easier to track a person. Because people are their own 'creators'. They constantly reassert their own names. Naraku was named Onigumo, but, now, he is Naraku. That's what he considers himself. But with a centuries-old artifact, we don't know what its creator actually called it or how they considered it. Furthermore, the Shikon has been shattered, which complicate the naming process even more. Is every shard going to have the same name? Are they all going to be different? There is no way to know for certain."

"In other terms…" trailed Sango.

"We're fucked?" proposed Inuyasha.

Hermione raised an eyebrow at the swearing.

"I wouldn't phrase it like that, but the main idea's there."

"On the contrary," contested Miroku. "Inuyasha mentioned that you could track down Naraku, is that correct?"

"Yes."

A wide grin lit the monk's face:

"Then everything is not lost."

XXXXX

Shivering in the dawn of this early spring, Hermione was checking her mokeskin pouch. She was carrying most of the group's supplies, courtesy of her super-expandable purse, which had, by everyone's advice, been elected the best item they had ever met. She agreed to the practicality of the thing – it did contain most of her common-use books – but her wand was still the most useful thing she could ever have, period. Though, she had made a note to research that extension spell in "The Standard Book of Spells: Grade six". The spell was taught in 6th year or 7th year and, for once, she couldn't remember, which meant she had probably heard someone mentioning it. Her hearing memory was not as good as her visual memory.

Returning to the present, she verified that she had all of her books with her – she had _categorically_ refused to part from a single one, even when they had reached the limit of what the pouch could hold – and went one more time through the mental list of everything else they needed to bring.

She shivered again. She was cloaked in her thick black robes, and even the few heating charms she had impregnated them with were not enough to protect her against the cold. Well, it could have been worse. At least, her legs were not bare.

The evening before their scheduled departure, she had found a pair of jeans in her pouch. She had spent a few minutes racking her brain on the hows and why it had ended here. She had eventually remembered that she had put them in at the beginning of the year, when she had changed into her Hogwarts uniform. She must had forgotten to take them out. She was extremely glad of her oversight, though. She really did not see herself embark on a potentially perilous journey in her grey knee-length skirt uniform. She would look ridiculous. And cold.

Mostly cold.

Also, and a lot more intriguing, she had also discovered hiking shoes in a thin white cotton bag. She had no idea how they had ended up in her personal pouch – seeing as she did not possess any hiking shoes – but here they were; shining new and to her size.

She had decided to disregard the mystery – for now – and had put them on. If she was going to be trekking, she'd better not do it in her thin city shoes. The blisters she would avoid lit her thoughts for a few seconds before her mind returned to the journey ahead.

For the umpteenth time, she looked at the slowly clearing skies, yawned, and casted another Heating Charm on her robes.

 _How did I agree to this?_

Thinking back on it, she definitely should have seen this coming.

The others needed to find Naraku, and she had proved that it was possible. Of course, since she was apparently the only witch around, her presence was required in the – certainly perilous – weeks of travel involved.

She really should have seen it coming.

Why in hell had she decided that she would absolutely see if casting the "point-me" spell would suffice to locate something that was unfindable? It was obvious they would not have said "oh cool, let's go in that vague direction that can change at any given time" but rather "let's use that tracking spell as it should be used and have the tracker lead the way".

Damn her and her problem-solving compulsions.

She looked at their small group, getting ready to depart. Sango was verifying the straps of her bone boomerang. Perched on her shoulder, Kirara was eying the process with attention. Miroku and Shippo were busy packing a few rations of food they would bring for the first days of the trip.

As Inuyasha was an excellent hunter – according to Sango who was to be trusted on the matter – they would not be bringing much food with them. Decided to show her participation, Hermione had explained she could make an orange tree grow out of nowhere if needed. They had looked at her weirdly, so she had explained what an orange tree was – the 'professor mode' had once again shown its uses – and received some more weird looks, which had prompted her to demonstrate.

Shippo had liked the oranges immensely and asked if she could make candies grow on her tree. The others had complimented her and said it would be a valuable asset if they needed something to eat fast.

 _Why did I agree to this?_

The first rays of the sun dawned over the top of the hill, promising a clear day, and Hermione realized that she was afraid. It was not a clenching fear or a paralyzing terror that glued her mind. No, she was just _…_ worried.

She sighed.

 _At least, Inuyasha said he'd protect me…_

And it had not been a joking 'don't worry, you ain't gonna get eaten'. No, the hanyou had been deadly serious when he had said those words. He had walked straight to her and stated that he would make sure she would be safe, no matter what they would face. He would protect her with his life, he had sworn, and Hermione had had the uneasy impression that Inuyasha had changed her status from ' _pleasant-but-odd acquaintance_ ' to ' _person-under-my-care_ '.

It felt disturbingly patronizing and she was not sure that she liked how, with only a few words, he had turned her into some sort of object subordinate to him. She had been pondering about it for the whole night, sleeping vaguely at one point. Then, when morning had come, it had hit her that Inuyasha was a half _dog_ -demon.

And dogs were social creatures who worked with a clear hierarchy within their groups.

Miroku, Sango, Shippo and Kirara – and certainly Kagome too – were his pack. She did not know if she had been promoted to full pack member or if she was somewhere in between but the fact was that, in any of these cases, it implied some level of trust.

The first warming rays of the sun reached her cheek and she smiled to herself.

She wondered what kind of other canine-patterns she would discern in his behavior.

XXXXX

" _Polylinguis_."

Hermione lowered her wand from Miroku's chest and patiently waited for the spell to take effect. She had come to realize that the _polylinguis_ 's efficiency depended on the target's knowledge of their language… and that Miroku was the most knowledgeable of their small group. Given that the monk was the only one who could read and write fluently medieval Japanese's convoluted kanjis, this was no surprise.

Switching the target of her linguistic spell every day was how Hermione had realized that ' _Inuyasha_ ' really meant ' _forest spirit dog_ " instead of simply ' _dog demon_ '. When she had mentioned her discovery to him, he had looked a bit puzzled and had shrugged it off. It did not seem to matter much to him.

After three days of un-incidental travel – for which she was more than grateful – Hermione had come to notice that she could still remember a good deal of the language's most basic structures even after the _polylinguis_ ceased to make effect. In fact, just before she had cast it on Sango, she had asked a probably clumsy "can I cast a spell on you?" and had seemed to be understood just fine.

It looked like the _polylinguis_ permanently ingrained the most fundamental forms of the target's language. And, from her observations, each repeated use added a new layer of knowledge into her subconscious. Slowly but surely, she was learning medieval Japanese.

This was probably not going to be her most essential skill when she would come back, but still… it was kind of cool.

With this thought in mind, she replaced her wand into the leather straps of her robes and accompanied Sango to a nearby stream to gather water. Of course, an _aguamenti_ would have done the trick but Miroku had advised her to use her power when it was actually necessary. Who knew when she could be abruptly required to perform important magic? The _aguamenti_ spell was not what you could call a tiring spell – even in her first year, Hermione had felt almost no drain when casting it – but she suspected that Miroku was just extremely reluctant to drink water that had just appeared out of thin air. That, she could understand.

The young witch was thus walking to the stream with Sango, both of them carrying many empty flasks and the small cauldron in which they would cook their breakfast.

They filled the flasks first and, one by one, Hermione fed them to her pouch. The item swallowed them silently, which Hermione had always found extremely creepy. Then, as they descended the cauldron into a seemingly deeper part of the pond, the slippery wet rock under her feet ceased to cooperate and it was only due to Sango's amazing reflexes that she did not end up in the water.

"Careful, Hermione," the slayer advised while releasing her iron grip on the witch's arm, "wouldn't want you to trip down and hurt yourself."

Sango's posture on the tricky rocks was perfectly balanced and she raised the filled cauldron as if it had weighted nothing. Hermione felt a tang of jealousy coursing through her. She mumbled an uncomfortable 'sorry' and added a clearer 'thank you' almost as an afterthought.

Why did every single one of them had to be so damn skilled?

Turning heels to hide her embarrassment, she began walking back in the direction of their small encampment. Lost in reflections about possible reasons – besides intense training – for Sango's inhuman strength and reflexes, she was not paying much attention to her surroundings, leaving a small part of her brain avoid the trunks for her. It was the same part of her brain that was allocated to navigating the school's hallways and moving stairs when she was walk-reading. She had always freaked out Ron by how good she was at it.

Of course, she knew that medieval Japan was not as safe as Hogwarts.

It just had not actually _sunk in_ yet.

Which is why she was surprised – and absolutely not prepared – when a blurred dark form emerged from the trees and crashed with her at high speed. She emitted a small 'huff' as the air was knocked out of her lungs. Then, she clashed with the ground. The world spun for a handful of terrifying seconds and Hermione realized that some pointy, heavy things were pinning her to the ground.

Glowing red orbs met her eyes.

XXXXX

 **So. I am so terribly sorry for not updating sooner. My computer crashed, I had to rewrite most of the chapter from memory AND, this was such a long chapter that I actually had to re-work my original planning of the chapters to break it in half...**

 **So it ends on a cliffhanger. My bad.**

 **I'm really not that good with action scenes I think. They don't come all that naturally to me, so the next Hermione installment is going to be really hard for me... but in the meantime, you'll get Kagome being a badass at Hogwarts and Harry showing some goddamn common sense.**

 **With that, review if you liked it (it does motivate me a lot to keep writing)**

 **Sincerely,**

 **Claywind**

 **PS: for those of you who are following Cold Heart, chapter 3 is almost done and should be out by the end of the week**


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